


not alone

by timetrees



Category: DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Autistic Character, Depression, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Jewish Character, M/M, Panic Attacks, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trans Male Character, mental health
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-01-19 08:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12406593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetrees/pseuds/timetrees
Summary: Tim Drake's life is a complicated and sad thing. This is him trying to work through it.It wasn’t quite a crashing down moment — there was no sky falling on his shoulders, there were no monumental responsibilities, if he was living in reality he would have been completely, totally fine. If he stopped thinking, he would be fine





	1. old lovers in dressing rooms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the dc/batman fandom seems to have a problem with tim drake. a lot of the fandom woobified him and turned him into something almost unrecognizable, and a lot of the fandom realized this and tried to pull back from it, but ended up going too far the other way. it's okay to write a character with depression, with good and bad days. it's okay to write a character feeling hopeless and then finding hope. so. that's what i did.
> 
> so this is, basically, tim drake: the depression fanfic.

Tim was hanging out with his ex-girlfriend and his (somewhat estranged and civilian) best friend.

The thing was, Ives had just left.

“So, Tim,” Ariana was saying. “What’s been going on in your life?”

Tim was really, really uncomfortable. The only thing was, he didn’t think he had the right to. The uncomfortableness he was feeling right then, it was something he’d felt about a thousand times before. The nervous feeling in his stomach, the uneasiness in his chest — it was guilt.

He ran through a few options of why he was feeling guilty, but he didn’t need to. He’d thought back on his life and his choices so many times, he’d figured out countless things he’d done wrong in their relationship.

“Not much,” he said, though it was an obvious lie. The ‘engagement’ with Tam had been only a month or so ago, and it was still all over gossip magazines. That wasn’t even counting all the things that had happened since the last time he’d seen Ariana.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” Ariana said.

“Oh,” Tim said, almost surprised. It seemed like that had happened so long ago. “I’m, um. I’m sorry I cheated on you.”

Maybe that wasn’t the best way to go about things. Ariana was staring at him now, eyebrows raised and one eye pinched slightly.

“Um,” she said. “You know that— Tim. You know we haven’t dated in years, right?”

“Yeah,” Tim said, suddenly feeling like _kind of_ an idiot. “I still… thought I might say it. Because I’m sorry. Did you know that…?”

“That you’re sorry?” Ariana asked. “You said it a few times in the past minute. But, um, kind of. I don’t know if you remember when I dyed my hair…”

“Bleached it, yeah.” Tim nodded.

“Because you were looking at that girl,” Ariana said. “She was blonde. I was jealous and traumatized. Was it her?”

“Uh, yeah,” Tim admitted. “I didn’t start dating her until we broke up… but I kissed her. She kissed me. Kissing and such. Yeah.”

“You are a strange one.” Ariana wasn’t smiling. In fact, she was frowning at him, but she didn’t look overly upset. “I figured something like that. Tim, I don’t know what the point of telling me was.”

“You deserved to know,” Tim said. “Or maybe you didn’t, if you didn’t want to. I’m not sure how I would’ve known if you didn’t, though.”

Ariana seemed to consider that. “You know what?” she said. “You’re right. Thanks.”

Tim shrugged and looked away from her. He didn’t know what to say, but at least it was out there. Ariana, too, seemed at a loss for words.

“Did the girl know?” she asked him, finally.

“What?”

“Did the girl know?” she asked. “The one you kissed and such.”

“Did the girl know… that we kissed?” Tim frowned.

Ariana groaned. “ _Boys_. Did she know you had a girlfriend?”

“Oh.” In hindsight, that should’ve been obvious. “I told her, I think, when she first kissed me. I’m still friends with her now, kind of.”

“Not dating her?”

“Oh, no.” Tim shook his head. Things with Steph were still… awkward. He didn’t really want to date her, anyway. Not anymore. “I’m not dating anyone right now.”

The conversation ceased until Ives came back, completely unaware of what had just gone on between them.

“I just saw a bubble tea place,” Ives said.

“Nice, I love bubble tea,” Ari said, jumping up. It was almost like the previous conversation had never happened, except Tim could see the slight tenseness in her shoulders. “I like the raspberry kind.”

They both glanced over at him, waiting for him to join in. It took a few seconds for Tim to realize and respond. Things were never this hard with his vigilante friends.

Or at least, they hadn’t been before half of them died.

“I don’t like the fruit jellies,” Tim said, maybe a couple seconds too late. “And my favorite flavor is probably vanilla.”

“Boring!” Ives said, in the kind of tone that he and Tim had heard from obnoxious jocks for years now. It was probably a joke, but it took too long for Tim to remember to laugh. Ives wasn’t looking at him now. Ariana clicked her tongue awkwardly.

Of course, it might have all been in Tim’s head. He thought too much, too often.

He said, “I also like vanilla lavender. Or peach vanilla.”

“Peach vanilla’s good,” Ari agreed. “Too bad there was no M-room when we dating.”

M-room was the slang term for the Midnight Room, which sounded kind of like a club to Tim, but was actually a tea and coffee shop. It was only a few minutes’ walk from Tim’s apartment, but he didn’t mention that, because Ariana didn’t know where he lived and that was probably for the best.

The tea place they went to wasn’t the Midnight Room, however, as it was not in the mall. Tim didn’t bother to look up and find the name, but it seemed fancier than he would have expected from it. It was possible he was just used to the comfortable nature of the Midnight Room.

“So,” Ives said when they sat down to wait for their drinks. “What have you guys been doing? Ari, I never see you. Tim, I never see you. Is it ‘cuz I had cancer?”

Ari choked a little bit. Tim’s eyebrows went up, which caused him to momentarily consider growing bangs.

“I’ve just been busy,” he said.

Ives tried to move his eyebrows in a suggestive manner, but it didn’t really work. “ _Busy,_ huh?” he asked. “You still dating that college girl?”

“No,” Tim said. “We weren’t even really dating. Or engaged.”

“How do you accidentally say you’re engaged to someone?” Ariana asked. “Was it like that one episode of Grey’s Anatomy?”

“Um.” Tim hadn’t seen that episode of Grey’s Anatomy. “A reporter was asking her a bunch of questions, and she got panicked. She kind of hates me now, anyway.”

Ari shook her head. “You really have a way with girls, don’t you?”

Tim sighed. “It feels like the only girls I get along with are my adopted sister and my friend Cassie.” He paused and frowned. “Both of them are named Cassandra.”

“I forgot you had a sister,” Ives said. “What’s she like? Cassandra Wayne, right? Or did she keep her name?”

“Cass Cain-Wayne,” Tim confirmed. “She’s great. Lives in Hong Kong right now, so we don’t see her too often. Not often enough, anyway.”

“Could say the same about you,” Ives muttered. “Ari, what about you? Still working at that, uhh, coffee… restaurant… cafe?”

“You can just say you don’t know where I work, Ives,” Ari said. When Ives didn’t respond, she added, “I still work there, yeah. Tim, is being co-CEO of Wayne Enterprises an actual job or more of a figurehead thing?”

“I… have to go to important meetings and fundraisers,” Tim offered. Ives snorted at his lackluster response.

“I have to deal with annoying customers and people flirting with me,” Ariana countered wryly.

“I got nothing,” Ives said. “Am I allowed to play the cancer card yet or is it too early?”

“You used to be a giant rat,” Tim reminded him.

“Right!” Ives sat up straighter. “That was _awful_.”

Ariana laughed. “Were you really? How many secrets do you keep, Ives?”

Ives had once been a much more confusing character in Tim’s life, but now everything and everyone in his life were so hectic things with his civilian friends didn’t even seem to compare. Back when he was a fourteen, fifteen year old kid, things like Ives having a secret job had seemed a lot more pressing.

Of course, Tim hadn’t known it was that when he’d been investigating it. Tim was Tim, so he’d suspected the worst.

“Hey, Tim, do you want to come over tonight?” Ives asked him. “We can play some new video games I got…”

“Sorry,” Tim said, and he really almost was. “I’m busy.”

There was no rest for the wicked.

That was something Bruce had told Tim, years ago, when he was still training to be Robin. He’d still been wearing the green tights, back then. Tim had taken the line seriously; he’d been more idealistic back then, more accepting of everything he came across. Over the years he became more realistic due to experience, but he still thought about those words.

There was no rest for the wicked, but there was even less for those who were not.

“Red Robin,” said a voice, half obscured in static. “Do you have eyes on Winters?”

“Yes,” Red Robin said lowly. “They’re moving to the meeting location. Do you have eyes on Carvin?”

“Yes.”

Red Robin nodded, though his partner for the night wouldn’t be able to see it. He leapt down from the roof (which hurt his feet) and snuck into the warehouse building adjacent to the place the two criminals they were tracking were meeting in.

Marsha Winters was a short and thick woman, with black eyebrows but hair as white as Ravager’s. She stood at the side of the door she’d entered in, waiting a moment to survey the area before moving toward a table with two chairs placed opposite each other. She seated herself, but with one foot positioned so she could run if she needed to.

Red Robin had seen that before — he’d done that before. She didn’t quite trust whoever she was meeting.

“Carvin is coming in.”

“Wait till we can get something,” Red Robin said, though it probably could have went unsaid.

David Carvin was so long-limbed and spindly he looked almost inhuman. His mouth was half-open in a strange grimace, his eyes were wide open and crazed, and his fist was clenched tightly around something that could have been and probably was a weapon.

“Carvin,” Marsha Winters said, rising up momentarily. “Good to see you.”

“You’ve come a long way from being an assassin, Winters,” Carvin said. He pronounced the _s_ in Winters sharper than the rest of his words. “And I mean that in a bad way. Why did you contact me?”

“My employers have a message for you,” Winters said. “They want you to work for them.”

“Your employers,” Carvin repeated. “I haven’t seen you since when the world almost ended a year and a half ago and you want to employ me?”

“I don’t, my employers do.” Winters shifted in her seat. “DIRAE wants you to supply us with your… paraphenalia.”

“What does DIRAE do?” Carvin asked. “And where do you get off in being the one to contact me?”

“David, I swear to god,” Winters said.

The mood of this scene had shifted suddenly and confusingly. Tim wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do.

“Okay, just- this is going nowhere.”

He’d seen enough fights between Batman and the Red Hood to know where that nothing useful was going to happen here. He’d barely finished his sentence before a shadow cast down on the two criminals and the Black Bat jumped down on the table between them.

“Holy shit!” Carvin tried to dive out of the way, but Black Bat caught his ankle as he moved.

“Who the fuck are you?” Winters asked, springing up and backing away quickly. Before she could escape, Red Robin moved in behind her and grabbed her.

“That’s Black Bat,” he answered her. “She’s been in Hong Kong.”

“I forgot to do a line,” Cass said to him. “I was going to say something from a movie.”

“It’s cool when you stay silent, too,” Tim said. “Very Batman-like.”

Cassandra smiled. Tim thought it was nice that he could see her smile in her new costume — in the old one it had been kind of creepy. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll be the Batman now.”

Well, alright then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this first chapter i started... fifty-ish days ago. this is the very beginning of the fanfic, where i thought maybe i'd have a plot besides emotional stuff. so the stuff about DIRAE is from that. i actually realized halfway through the scene with them that i wasn't going to do anything about it. it gets better when i realize what i'm doing with the thing.
> 
> think of it like 'heroes of another story', except with villains who have a weird past together. keep reading and such.


	2. the man that i should be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So… I don’t know, Tim. I think this is me… it’s ended, isn’t it? For good. We’re done and gone and dead.” She paused. “Well, not dead. Had enough of death, I think. But you know what I mean. I’m done getting jealous even when I’m not dating you, I’m done second guessing everything you say to me. I’m just done. Uh… are you done too?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi again. thought i'd upload another chapter since i have all of them finished.  
> shorter one here. not the shortest, though. longest is the last chapter. anyway!

Google search: how to stop being weird about religion

“Um,” Tim said aloud at one of the results — _Jesus is Ruining my Love Life_. “Great.”

Another one of the results was about someone being tired of being a Christian. Tim groaned and slid down in his chair. What was he supposed to search for? _My family used to be Jewish but they stopped and now they’re dead?_

Wait. What were the results for that?

Dammit.

* * *

 Red Robin really, really hated working with the Red Hood.

Working with Robin was annoying, but doable. Even if they both disliked and annoyed each other, Tim could (usually. Ish.) push down his feelings towards the kid. With Red Hood, though — it was too much for him. Too personal.

Before he’d came back to life and attempted murder on Tim a few times, he’d really admired him.

But they’d collided on a case with some missing children and a trafficking circle. Red Robin had been investigating the children and Red Hood the trafficking, and of course it was the same deal. Red Robin could ignore his feelings, he was sure, but only for the children.

Lately, and by lately he meant _extremely_ recently, the Hood had been working closer to the other Bats. Maybe he’d finally had a talk with Batman that had stuck, maybe he was tired of being angry, Tim didn’t know — and he didn’t care. Jason could work with Batman or even rejoin the family all he wanted. Tim just didn’t want anything to do with him.

Maybe he had some issues with grudges.

“I’ll handle the kids,” Red Hood and Red Robin said at about the same time. They looked at each other, and Tim blinked, but Jason was wearing a helmet so even if he did the same, Tim couldn’t see it.

If he was a more passive person, or maybe just if he had less adrenaline running through him right then, he might have just backed off and let Jason have it. As it were, Tim didn’t bother to give in and continued to stare at the Hood’s helmet.

Why was he called Red Hood if it was a helmet?

“I’ll,” Red Hood repeated, watching Red Robin as to not be jinxed again, “handle the kids.”

“You don’t want to beat up the traffickers?” Red Robin asked. “Isn’t that kind of your whole thing?”

“I know more of what these kids are going through,” Hood said, “and don’t _you_ want to beat up the traffickers? Aren’t you afraid I’ll kill them or some shit?”

Red Robin studied him for a few seconds, which was hard because he couldn’t see his face. “Yeah, sure,” he said, finally. “Let’s get a move on.”

None of the criminals involved were particularly smart or unusually athletic — taking them down wasn’t as much a job as it was a chore. Tim figured he should have felt good about this, rescuing children and stopping the more despicable side of crime, but in reality he just felt a little empty.

Red Hood was looking for the children deeper inside, so Red Robin had enough time to drag each of the criminals out on the street for the cops to pick up. He had a direct phone line to the station, specifically to Harper and Bard, which was much easier than calling 911 and spending ten minutes trying to convince them he really _was_ Robin.

He meant Red Robin. Dammit.

Tim wasn’t sure if he should have left Jason in there to deal with things on his own, but he’d wanted to be the one to work with the kids, so.

(And Tim didn’t really want to work with him any longer than he needed to. For real, Damian was preferable.]

“Anyone wanna jump in on this fight I’m havin’?” asked a voice from the comm. It was Batgirl. “Uhh, dark and handsome chick here, looks like a biker?”

Tim almost responded with something like _Never heard of her_ but remembered himself. Was he supposed to talk? To Steph? What was he supposed to say to her? Things had been confusing with her for far too long.

Nobody else responded, either. After a few minutes, Steph said: “Anyone?”

Yeah, sure.

* * *

The “dark and handsome chick” was in fact a biker, and had stolen twenty thousand dollars worth of high-tech weaponry from Star City, of all places. Why she was in Gotham now, Red Robin wasn’t sure.

Batgirl wasn’t, either, though she seemed to like making a game out of the biker’s journey.

“Maybe she was visiting some family in Star and she was like, oh shit gotta take a detour — steal some weapons,” Steph was saying. They were sitting on a roof watching the police haul the woman into the back of a police car.

Tim was almost smiling. But he wasn’t. Because he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to. Or if he could. His thoughts were coming after brief pauses and it was really annoying. Could he not work seamlessly?

“Or she was trying to get out to the sea,” Steph mused. “Escape the country. Which, you’d think it’d be easier not to cross the country you’re escaping just to get to the other side of the ocean…”

Tim shrugged. “Too many bike crashes?”

Steph snorted. “She _wasn’t_ wearing a helmet, so…” she paused, sucking her lips in and frowning a little bit. She was holding something back. Tim was pretty sure he knew what it was. “I missed this.”

“Hm,” he said, and maybe it was a question, but it might not have been.

“I just…” Steph’s eyes lidded down, her breath coming out in one harsh exhale. “We used to be so good at this, right? Fighting crime and chatting and hanging out. Then I died, fake died, and it all kind of got…”

She didn’t finish. Tim didn’t really want to do this. He didn’t want to think about it.

“Things got messed up,” he said. “And I’m sorry for that.”

“Yeah…” Steph crossed one leg over the other. “Things change, I guess. We were kids then, right? Even though it wasn’t that long ago. And we… we were never going to be forever, were we?”

Tim didn’t know what to say. He never knew what to say with her anymore.

“No,” he said. “Maybe not.”

“Teen romance,” Steph said. “And it was a good teen romance, mostly. But I’m nineteen now and you’re, what, seventeen? Almost eighteen? We’ve grown. We’re not little kids.”

Tim nodded quietly. It was probably best to just let Stephanie talk — she realized her thoughts best out loud.

“So… I don’t know, Tim. I think this is me… it’s ended, isn’t it? For good. We’re done and gone and dead.” She paused. “Well, not _dead_. Had enough of death, I think. But you know what I mean. I’m done getting jealous even when I’m not dating you, I’m done second guessing everything you say to me. I’m just _done_. Uh… are you done too?”

Tim took a minute to respond. “We probably should have been done a while ago,” he admitted. “Yeah. I’m done. But we’re okay, right? I know… I know still have some things to apologize for.”

Steph rose to her feet and inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” she said, “but I do too. We don’t really need to say it, do we?”

“I’m sorry I was a bad boyfriend,” Tim said, just to say it, and maybe a little to challenge her.

Steph smiled. “I’m sorry for being a bad girlfriend.”

Tim didn’t think she had been a bad girlfriend, but before he could dispute her words, she grappled off the roof and vanished.

Was it this annoying for everyone else when he did it, too?

[Calling…]

“Hey.”

“What’s up?”

“I don’t know.”

“...”

“...I, uh, I don’t know. I just said that. Do you think, like — everything was meant to be this hard?”

“What, life?”

“Yeah, I guess. [sighs]. I don’t really know what I’m saying…”

“Yeah, well, I’m told I never know what I’m saying.”

“Hm. Um, I don’t know… I feel like I used to, like, I used to have so much… hope. For our lives and the world and… now I don’t. I don’t think I do anymore.”

“...”

“...”

“Are you okay?”

“No. [pause]. I’m okay in the short term. I’m not dying.”

“Do you want to hang out? We can meet up at the Tower or something, if Bats won’t let me in Gotham.”

“It’s alright. [pause]. But if you want to…”

“I’ll race you.”

“You have— you can _fly._ ”

“Yeah, well, don’t you have a plane or two you can use, Timothy Drake-Wayne?”

“Shut up.”

“See you there.”


	3. will you watch me

It was three days later and Tim didn’t want to get out of bed.

It wasn’t quite a crashing down moment — there was no sky falling on his shoulders, there were no monumental responsibilities, if he was living in reality he would have been completely, totally fine. If he stopped _thinking_ , he would be fine.

Tim wanted to go back in time and slap his younger self. He didn’t really have a reason to, except maybe for jealousy. But what was he jealous of?

He just wished it was over. Not over in a death way, not really, not usually, but — if he could just stop for a while, maybe it would get easier.

There was a meeting he was supposed to go to.

* * *

Tim zoned in and out of the Batman Family Meeting. He should’ve paid attention — even Batwoman was there, and she was oftentimes more disconnected from the family than anyone (though Tim suspected that was just because she was busy and she and Bruce didn’t always see eye to eye).

He had bubble tea, no bubbles, in a clear cup with a lid on it. Steph, who shared his love of no-boba bubble tea, kept stealing sips of it, as she was sitting next to him. Tim didn’t care enough to stop her. Cass was sitting on the other side, one hand wrapped around a stress ball (where had she gotten it?) and the other laid palm-down on the table.

Dick was talking. It took a few seconds to really concentrate on hearing what he was saying, and even then Tim was a little lost. He should’ve started paying attention earlier.

Dick was saying something about crime increasing in Brideshead, a neighborhood patrolled mainly by Dick himself and sometimes Batgirl on off-nights. Historically, it had been the home of only one crime lord in particular, but recently the drug trade had gained a bit of traction and a lot of violence.

“I can go ‘round there more and try to get more of the drug guys arrested,” Steph suggested. “I feel like if we can knock down a few of the big guys, it could like… you know in bowling?”

Batman frowned. He probably didn’t like hearing bowling metaphors about crime. “We could assign Robin to work with you,” he said nonetheless.

Steph smiled in a biting kind of way. “I think I can deal with it by myself,” she said.

Babs, who’d been more or less engrossed in her tablet (she was probably spying on some sort of criminal affair), looked up and raised her eyebrows. At this point Tim zoned out again, because he didn’t really want to watch a bat fight.

Even like this, he could make puns.

When Tim stopped staring at his fingernails and looked back at the rest of the table, there was a knife jammed into the crack between the two sides of it. Damian was glaring at it. Dick had his head in his hands and Kate had a strange and amused look on her face.

Tim had no idea what was going on and he didn’t really think he wanted to know.

He slept through the end of the meeting; when he woke up, he had a red cardigan draped over his neck and back. He was pretty sure it was Kate’s, and he was also pretty sure he was going to end up keeping it.

Nobody was in the room but a dark and slight figure next to him — his eyes were half-closed still, and he had to turn his head around to see. It was Cass, wearing a knitted sweater with the Bat symbol on it, and she was staring at him with the same worried look she often gave to news stories of sick orphans and the like. (To be fair, he _was_ a sick orphan).

She said, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Tim replied, automatic as ever. He shouldn’t have tried it, because Cass then gave him a look that wasn’t quite a glare but was definitely close, with narrowed eyes and furrowed brows and a hard line in her mouth.

“I don’t _know_ ,” he said, and regretted the way he emphasized the last word because it made him sound like some kind of angsty teenager — wait, was he really only seventeen? “I don’t… I thought I was. I thought I was going to be, at least.”

Cass didn’t answer for a while. Then she said: “I had a death wish for a while.”

“Yeah,” Tim said, a little jolted. “I heard.”

“And I got past it,” Cass went on. “But that’s hard to do. And I’m still not… the ideal. Am not sure… what the ideal is. But I don’t think I’m it. But…” she was frowning harder now, the way she did when she struggled with English. “I’m worried for you.”

Tim wanted to look away from her, but he hadn’t been looking at her in the first place. He was glad, though, that it was her talking to him instead of Dick, or god forbid Bruce. She really was his favorite (albeit only) sister.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he said, and let his head fall back down onto the table. “Dick wanted me to go to a therapist in Metropolis but I don’t want to.”

Cass rested one hand on his head, threaded through his hair. It was an odd but comforting gesture. “You could talk to us,” she said. “Or me. Or learn an instrument.”

Tim wasn’t sure about the instrument thing, but he said, “I could learn to play the piano. Steph could teach me.”

He wasn’t looking at her, but he knew Cass smiled then. “She probably would,” she responded fondly. “Are things still… awkward between you?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” One of Cass’s fingers twitched in his hair. “Between us, too.”

“Really?” Tim lifted his head to sneak a glance at his sister. “I didn’t know.”

Cass shrugged. “Just because of the Batgirl thing,” she said, and stood up. “Take… care.”

“Take care,” Tim repeated, though she was already gone.

* * *

“Can we look at our mentions on the TT Twitter?” Bart said, leaning over past Kon to try to grab his phone from a charger — his arm was just a bit too short. “I feel like, there’s like, always some REALLY crazy shit on it.”

He kept waving his hand near his phone till Kon threw it towards him with what was probably TTK. “Thaaaank you,” Bart mumbled, tapping on his phone at a speed that was maybe too fast to be safe.

“Mhm,” Kon said, and sunk into the couch a bit, leaning onto Bart’s shoulder a bit. He had some stubble coming in, which reminded Tim of those times back in Young Justice when he’d been too lazy and rebellious to shave.

Maybe it was because he was tired, or maybe it was because he felt a little less tired right with them, but when he smiled at them he felt like the sun. (Whatever that meant. He didn’t know feelings.)

Bart noticed him first, and smiled back in an equal manner. “What’s up with that?” he asked.

Tim fought to keep the smile on his face, but only out of habit — he’d spent a lot of his childhood hiding his smile from others, for reasons he couldn’t remember. He shrugged and flicked his eyes away from them for a second.

In his peripheral vision, Tim saw Bart tilt his head back to look at Kon in a way that — Tim wasn’t sure how to describe it. It was like the feeling of an inside joke wrapped in something he couldn’t recognize. He couldn’t see Kon’s response, but there was something… different about it. Different than he was used to, at least.

But lots of things were different now.

Recently, Kon had been going back to his roots. That was to say, he was being a bit more like how he’d been a few years ago, before he’d been given Conner Kent and Kansas and whatever else was new (ish) in his life. He hadn’t said anything, but Tim knew he was a little insecure about his identity still. It was fine; weren’t they all? (Tim definitely was.)

“Give me… free… wisdom,” Bart read off his phone. “Rob, do you have any wisdom?”

“Don’t land on your feet,” Tim said. “Compliment cashiers. Um… appreciate people before they leave you. Don’t write that one down.”

“I’m gonna write it down,” Bart said. “Do you really not want it posted? Someone’s mom might get cancer.”

“Kryptonite cancer,” Kon added. “But don’t write that down, Ravager might see it.”

“Or Lex Luthor,” Bart muttered, snickering after he said it. “Posted, barring cancer stuff. Did Gar buy Doritos?”

“Yeah, but I think he might’ve ate them,” Kon said, but Bart had already ran off. He was back within a second. “Or maybe he didn’t.”

“Yeah, it’s half full,” Bart said, and took his phone out again. “Uhhhhh there’s a lot of talk about something Gar said… also, someone asks if he’s a furry? Which I’ve wanted to ask him for like, ever, but, y’know.”

“Mhm,” Kon said.

“Oh, and.” Bart started laughing. “Someone posted a screenshot of Wendy the Werewolf Stalker and asks if that’s Cassie in the background — should I tell them yes or is it too much for your broken heart?”

Kon huffed. “No, I’m _fine,_ ” he said. “Just, y’know, Ciss really invited Cassie? And not me? I just don’t get it. It’s _me._ ”

“Kon, that was years ago,” Tim said, but he did find it kind of funny. The amount of fights he and Kon had gotten in because of that show…

“Time doesn’t heal all wounds,” Kon said. He was being dramatic on purpose, of course, but it was still a little ridiculous.

They stayed silent for a while, as Bart scrolled through the apparently hilarious Twitter feed. It wasn’t awkward or tense, because they were _them_ , and they weren’t supposed to be awkward or tense. Still, Tim felt uneasy, but only because he was a generally uneasy person.

“You’re Jewish, right?” he asked. He didn’t have to address who he was talking to because he knew both of them were anyway.

“Yah,” Bart said. “You need some joughts?”

Tim blinked. “What?”

“Like, the jeans meme, but with Jew instead of jean,” Bart explained. “Jew thoughts. You need ‘em? I pretty much learned Hebrew last week.”

“I forgot about your memory thing,” Tim muttered. “I don’t really know. I was trying to Google this stuff, but, uh, it was really late and I think I forgot how Googling works? I just typed out my exact situation and the only thing that came up was some blog post about Jesus ruining someone’s marriage or something.”

“Oh, me,” Bart said. “I’ve never been married but like, me? Though? What did you Google to get that?”

“I don’t remember,” Tim said. “One of the searches was basically ‘I used to be Jewish but my parents stopped and now I’m an orphan’.”

“Oh, yikes,” Bart said.

“Are there no Jews in your family?” Kon asked.

“Well, there’s Batwoman, but we don’t talk much,” Tim said. “Dick’s mostly vaguely Christian, I guess? None of us are really that religious. I think we all got really jaded about the whole thing. Cass wasn’t raised with any religion, I think Steph’s dad was Christian but he’s, yknow. Damian hasn’t said anything about religion that I’ve heard, so I don’t know about him.” He shrugged.

“Well, if you wanna be a Jew again, I can help,” Bart said. “Is that a thing? Like a Jewish mentor teaching Jews to be Jews? Reminds me of Max.”

“A Rabbi?” Kon asked. “I’m alien Jewish _and_ normal Jewish. But, like, I don’t know anything about Krypton’s version of Judaism, so I guess I’m kind of with you? Not really. I’m try’na relate.”

“It’s fine, Conner,” Tim said. “It’s not like it’s a really important thing to me, just, I don’t know. I know my mom used to celebrate Jewish stuff and she was kind of into it, but she stopped somewhere along the line and I don’t know why. I’m not even sure _when_.”

“Weren’t you trained by the world’s greatest detective?” Kon asked. “It’s a mystery. Go solve it, Wonder Boy.”

Tim laughed in a very slight, huffing way. “Maybe I will, Clone Boy,” he said. “Maybe I will.”


	4. it's so loud inside my head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tim has a worse day than usual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know that feeling?

Everything was closing around him—

He needed to stop; if he could just disconnect again, he wouldn’t be— he’d used to be able to do it so easily. He’d used to be able to just… snap. But he was too full of… something. He couldn’t think clearly, much less stop thinking at all.

Everyone needed to get away from him.

Someone was talking — the voice was a little loud and a bit harsh, so it was probably Steph. She spoke with a clarity and purpose that not everyone had. Before he could wonder why he was recognizing people by their voices, he realized his eyes were screwed shut. He was so tense he thought he might get stuck that way.

Someone was talking to Steph… he wished they would stop, or maybe that he could get up and leave, but he couldn’t, and he didn’t know why. There was this feeling in his chest that wouldn’t stop, like he was going to cry but would not.

Why did he keep getting like this? Wasn’t this bothersome to everyone, including himself?

“Are you okay?” Dick asked, and Tim was pretty sure he was the one being asked. He tried to take a deep breath, but it came out shuttering and shallow.

“Fine,” he muttered. “I’m just— fine.”

Was he, though?

Steph and… Cass, probably, paused their conversation. Tim could feel them looking at him. He could feel everything. Cass spoke:

“You’re…” she paused here, probably looking for a word. “Not fine. Don’t lie.”

Tim swore he was going to explode. He really didn’t want to explode at Cass, or Dick, or Steph, or anyone, but if he couldn’t shut down, what could he do?

“I’m not _lying_ ,” he said through gritted teeth. “Get— away from me. Get away from me.” He kept muttering it, quieter and quieter. He needed to stop. This was so damn annoying.

He opened his eyes. Cass looked tense, though not as tense as he must have looked, and she was frowning at him. He hoped he hadn’t hurt her feelings; he was always hurting people. He was so bad with others.

“Tim,” Dick was saying. His words felt washed out, barely there. God, Tim wished he would leave. Maybe Tim could leave. Could he move? He’d barely been able to open his eyes a few seconds ago.

“Maybe we should leave him alone, um, Dick,” Steph said. Wow, Tim loved her. Not the way he had before, but still. He was grateful for her.

Dick took a minute to respond, and not in the exaggerated way people talked about ten second increments. It was about forty to fifty seconds, and each one was stiff and awkward. Finally, he said “I guess,” and left. Cass and Steph followed soon after.

Tim slid down the wall he’d pressed himself against and stayed there.

He’d almost calmed down, genuinely, or at least he’d almost became numb again, but then (and this must have been an hour later, he really didn’t know) someone else spoke up. Immediately, he felt sharp again, full of too much emotion and too much…

“What happened to you?” Batman asked him. And it was Batman asking him — it wasn’t his voice as Bruce, but the cold, harsher voice of the Batman. Every day Tim hated it more and more, just by a little bit.

One time, in his first few weeks as a Titan, Tim had said that he sometimes hated Batman. He didn’t want it to be true.

He _didn’t_ hate Batman. For a while, Batman had been all he had.

All he had.

With all his thoughts, he didn’t get a chance to respond to the unhated Batman. He thought Batman was still probably mad at him for the fiasco with Captain Boomerang. Tim was still mad about it, too. Just a bit.

He focused and unfocused his vision at the middle spot between his knees and feet. He wished Batman would leave him alone. He wished everyone would leave him alone. Batman spoke again, and though he didn’t quite process what he had said, he heard it nonetheless.

“Get away from me,” Tim muttered.

“Red Robin,” Batman said, and that was — that was it. He couldn’t do it.

“Get _away_ from me,” he said, with gritted teeth and clenched fists and he thought his voice was shaking, maybe with anger and maybe just with… it was too much. Everything was way too much.

He was trembling, he realized, when Batman leaned down and grabbed his knee to steady him. Tim jerked as soon as he made contact, but managed not to kick the goddamn Batman in the face. His left hand made an effort to grab onto something, anything, but the ground was just concrete and all he managed to do was scrape it with his fingernails.

“Red Robin,” Batman said, forcefully, and Tim wished he would stop being Batman, that he could stop being Red Robin, why couldn’t he just be his _father_ , not his real father but at least _a_ father. He hated it. He hated it.

He hated Red Robin. He hated it. It was a way to punish himself, Conner had been right, and he hated his costume, and he hated his life, he hated himself.

“Stop calling me that,” he muttered, and kept muttering it, but the words got more and more garbled as he said them. “Stop — get away. Don’t touch me.”

Batman’s hand was still on his knee, and Tim could barely see him frowning, eyes narrowed even behind the cowl. He needed to stop touching him. He needed to get away from him. Batman made a move to say something else, and Tim did something that was less an attempt to get away and more a complicated spasm.

Someone else was watching him, but Tim didn’t try to see who. It was better not to know. Some distance away, he heard a voice say “Is he okay?” in a voice that sounded less concerned and more judgmental.

Dick said, slowly, “I don’t know,” and Tim could feel, hear him coming toward him. Stop. He wanted to say the words aloud but they didn’t come out as more than an intense, shaky breath.

He barely felt Dick’s own knee pressed slightly, accidentally against his thigh, but it was still too much.

“Can you get _away_ from me?” he said. His face was pressed into a scowl so intensely it was getting painful.

“What happened to him?” Batman asked Dick.

“Nothing happened!” Tim said, his voice going way too high. He needed to stop. He was messing things up. He wasn’t supposed to be this way. He was supposed to be smart, in control, like a leader, like someone reliable, but he wasn’t. He was failing. He hated the self pity but he hated how he was acting more. “Why can’t you guys just leave me alone for _once_ —”

He cut himself off. He was breathing too hard.

“Tim,” Dick said. “What’s wrong, are you okay?”

Tim wanted —

“Just get away,” he muttered. He wanted to sink into the ground of the cave. He was already underground, what was a bit more? “I need to be alone, get away from me.”

“You should get out of costume,” Batman said. Tim wanted to scream. Was Bruce Wayne really so emotionally oblivious he couldn’t just let it _go_?

“I will if you _leave me alone_!” he said, probably way too loudly. He could still feel someone watching him.

“What happened to Drake?” he heard Damian ask. He heard what was pretty much the verbal equivalent of a shrug from someone who was almost definitely Jason and a new wave of horror washed over him.

He hated Jason Todd. He hated him. Dammit.

“Will you leave?” he shouted to that general direction. Then there was a scoffing sound and a hard stomping of boots until his presence was gone completely. Tim hoped Jason had left with him. “I just— I should. I’ll leave. I’m leaving.”

“Tim,” Dick said, and Tim felt bad for how worried he sounded, but he really couldn’t deal with anyone else. He needed to leave. To go _somewhere_.

He took less than sixty seconds to run up to his now mostly unused room, less than two minutes to change out of his Red Robin outfit (it was a skill they’d all had to master to be cleared for field duty) and thirty seconds to change into a black t-shirt (it was actually probably Superboy’s) and sweatpants.

And then he left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not much to say, i'm trying to take a walk before it gets dark.


	5. just live

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bart and tim talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here's the ot3....the beginning of it, anyway.  
> me reading over this chapter: [in tears] they're so fucking in love

What brought him to Young Justice’s old (but not oldest) headquarters, Tim didn’t know. There was something about that period of time that they’d used it that was so comforting to him. Maybe it was the simplicity of it; it had been before so many deaths, so many betrayals, so many heartbreaks…

He almost wished he could go back, but he didn’t want to live it all over again knowing it would all fall apart.

Tim wandered around the place for a few minutes. It was abandoned, but littered with remnants of the past. He picked up a picture of Cissie and Cassie together, laughing, and pocketed it. He’d probably give it to her the next time she seemed too stressed. There was a notebook that Tim had never seen before. When he opened it, it was full of scribbles and drawings and a few words here and there.

It was a confused and messy notebook. Tim was pretty sure it belonged to Suzie — or rather, Greta.

There was an arrow lodged into the wall near the kitchen, with writing under it in black Sharpie — **OLYMPIC ARCHER’S ARROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!**. It was cute, and in Bart’s handwriting, though Tim could have guessed who wrote it even without recognizing it.

It was like a house of memories. Once, it had even been full of cameras, recording their adventures, but Cassie had gotten rid of that quickly. Sometime, Tim would tip Beast Boy off to some scattered saves of the livestream so they could watch it, but not tonight.

Or the next night.

Tim took a deep breath. He was fine now, he thought, maybe. Unless he thought too hard. If he thought too hard, he was almost crying again.

He’d yelled at Batman.

The funny thing was, he wasn’t that upset about that. Batman had yelled at him a number of times. But he’d also been mad at Dick, and maybe hurt Cass’s feelings, and he didn’t want that. He still cared too much about Dick’s opinion of him.

They were brothers now, but Tim still felt like the same awestruck little boy at the circus he’d been so long ago.

The tight feeling in his chest and the hot feeling trickling down his face told Tim he was crying again. He felt almost out of his own body.

Maybe he did need therapy, but he was pretty sure he was too proud to admit it.

“Tim?”

His muscles went rigid, his body went tense, and Tim recognized the voice and he _loved_ the voice but he couldn’t — not now. Not yet.

Slowly, swallowing that strange and awful feeling, Tim turned. Bart wasn’t in costume, but wearing a yellow Flash hoodie was almost close enough. Bart watched him back, not speaking yet. Tim wished he didn’t have to be so… careful. Tim wasn’t breakable.

If he could break, it would be much easier.

“It’s just me,” Bart said. “Are you okay?”

Yes.

“No.”

Bart raised his eyebrows almost imperceptibly, probably surprised by his honesty. Tim hadn’t meant to be honest — he swore lying was all he did recently. He wanted to back away and leave, but Bart would catch him even if he ran as fast as he could.

It was one of the drawbacks to having a speedster as a best friend; if they wanted to find you, they almost always could.

“How did you find me?” Tim asked. His voice felt too disconnected, but repeating the phrase in a stronger way would give off the wrong message, he was sure. Social interaction (or at least ‘proper’ social interaction) didn’t come easily to him, so he thought about the intricacies of it too hard and too often. It was probably not as complicated as it seemed, but Tim was never one for taking chances.

“It wasn’t the first place I looked,” Bart admitted. He disappeared, but it only took a second for Tim to find him again on the couch, one arm stretched out over the back of it. He continued to talk as Tim trudged over. “I like this place, though. It reminds me of when things were easier.”

Bart’s words reflected so hard in Tim’s heart that he had to stop moving for a second. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Me too. Um, why— why did you find me?”

Bart blinked at him. “Conner got a text,” he said. “It was from the short guy, kinda rude, but I think he was actually worried about you. I said I’d find you ‘cuz I’m faster.”

Damian had texted Kon? Where had he even gotten his number?

“You didn’t need to find me,” Tim said. “I wasn’t going to do anything. I’ve done enough.”

Bart blinked. “Well…” he said. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to.”

At this point Tim was climbing over the back of the couch. He sat down next to Bart awkwardly, knees hugged to his chest and fingers laced at his ankles. “I… thank you, I think. I’m sorry if you got worried.”

Bart shrugged. “I’m always worried,” he told Tim. “I cry a lot, but like, only late at night when no one’s there but sometimes Kon and I only do it like once every few weeks but it’s for a long time and I can’t stop until I’m really dehydrated even if I’m not sad anymore.”

Tim blinked. “Um,” he said. “That was... a lot. Are you okay?”

Bart bounced a bit in his seat. “Nah,” he said. “But kinda. It’s whatever, I’m figuring it out. Are you okay?”

“I think you already asked that,” Tim said. “I don’t like crying. Especially in front of people.”

“Well, you don’t have to.” Bart was looking him in the eye in a way that was comforting and almost scary at the same time. Tim didn’t like to look people in the eye — he’d slowly been getting worse at it.

He was pretty sure that was something his parents had got him to work on in therapy as a young child, but he didn’t think he’d be able to go to therapy now. Not unless Doctor Mid-Nite did therapy (and he was kind of scared of meeting Pieter again. He really needed to change his costume up.)

He didn’t say anything about that. Instead, inexplicably, he said: “I want to, though.”

Bart blinked, like he hadn’t expected that. It was okay; Tim hadn’t expected it either. He swallowed, took a moment to talk again. “I don’t… know what’s wrong with me.”

Bart tilted his head a bit. “Well… I don’t think you have to.”

“You read books on it?” Tim asked. It wasn’t as funny as he’d intended it to be, probably since his voice was pretty much too dejected to make _anything_ come across as funny. He was a walking tragedy right then.

Or maybe he always was? He really was almost over the thought that he caused the deaths of everyone around him. Not all of them had been his fault.

His father, Darla, Young El, maybe even Steph - they were his fault. But not everyone. Not… everyone.

Bart was barely smiling. “I just get in a lot of sad feelings jams,” he said. “IDK. I think I’m a little, uhh, repressed. Usually. I think I already said that. But what happened with you and your, uh, Bat people?”

Tim slid down in his seat a bit. There was a slight feeling on his head, Bart’s fingers twirling through his hair. It was… nice.

“I yelled,” he started, voice catching for a second. He pushed on. “At Batman. And the others. But mostly Batman.”

Bart bobbed up and down a little bit, shaking the sofa cushion. “I’ve yelled at Wally before,” he told Tim. “I don’t like yelling, though. I don’t get why things can’t just be light.”

“Things are never light,” Tim said. He would have said it with a scoff, but he didn’t want to bring even more negativity to the conversation. “I said… I don’t even know anymore. I felt like I was exploding. I _told_ him to get away from me.”

Bart stayed silent for longer than Tim would’ve expected from him. Then, quickly, and then not quickly at all, he reached a hand to Tim’s face and stroked under his eye. It was only then that Tim realized he’d been crying, albeit so silently and softly it was barely noticeable.

Tim probably looked really awful. He was a little embarrassed to look like that while Bart looked…

There was another tear, and Tim didn’t even bother to blink it away. Bart was staring at him, considering him, his mouth open just a little with his tongue pushed out between his teeth. Tim was still crying, chest shuddering, but he felt calm, almost.

It was sunset, and he was calm, and Bart’s hand was still in his hair and the other hand was just a few inches from his face.

And Bart kissed him.

Tim took about half a second to remember how to think, and a second after that to react. He leaned more towards Bart, shifting his weight, and hooking two fingers in the collar of Bart’s shirt. Maybe he shouldn’t have kissed back — Tim wasn’t exactly known for making the _best_ choices in his romantic life – but he was already doing it, so what point was there in stopping now?

He almost gasped when Bart pulled away. “I thought,” he said after a moment, breathless. “Kon…”

“Yeah,” Bart said, with half a smile. “But… you too.”

Tim thought he needed to drink some water. “I don’t understand,” he said. He also thought he probably needed to eat something.

“Umm…” Bart blinked. “Sorry, it’s, like, _so_ not a big deal in the future. You know that plotline in Schitt’s Creek where David and Stevie dated the same guy at the same time? Like that, but not an awful mess, and, uh, like a triangle and not a V.”

Tim stared at him for a long moment, blinking only once. “You— what, you…”

Bart squirmed a little. “Well, I don’t know. That was the plan, kind of? But, Rob, you’re the only sort of person who would plan like that. Me ‘an Kon thought… well, we’re already kind of a team, aren’t we? So we’ve been dating. And we thought, I don’t know, um… if you wanted to be _included_ , then… we should do that.”

Holy shit.

“Maybe I should’ve led with that before kissing you,” Bart admitted, pulling his hand from Tim’s hair to put behind his neck awkwardly. It was a stiff and performed gesture, which Tim only knew because he’d practiced it in the mirror so many times in attempts to understand… whatever he was trying to understand.

“No,” Tim said, and cursed himself for not planning his next sentence before starting it. “I mean… I’ve. Um. Honestly, I’ve probably been in love with Kon for years. Don’t tell him I said that. And you… I’m sorry. I’m really bad at talking.”

Bart’s smile was shaky. “I just… if you don’t want to— that’s. It’s fine.”

“No, I.” Tim was responding as quickly as he could; he couldn’t stand to see Bart so… insecure. “I think — I really. Like that. It’s just confusing.”

“Kon thought you might want a Power Point,” Bart said. “I can make one really quickly if you want.”

“Um, that’s okay,” Tim said. Then: “Actually, if you could…”

Bart laughed, the tension breaking. “BRB.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: bart kissing tim in the middle of a sad feelings jam probably isn't the smartest thing to do, and i don't recommend doing it yourself, but these guys aren't the most emotionally aware people around.
> 
> comment and such, love u guys


	6. every moment that you rise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You should go put a note on it for your future past self to see,” Bart said.  
> “But I didn’t see a note,” Kon said.  
> “That’s just how time travel works sometimes.” Bart nodded knowingly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love these losers a lot

“We should go to Hawai’i,” Kon said. “Have you been to Hawai’i?”

“We should go on a road trip,” Bart said, apparently ignoring his (their?) boyfriend. “But like, instead of driving, you just carry Tim and I run and we go, like, Area 51 or something.”

“I don’t think we’re cleared to go to Area 51,” Tim said.

“Really?” Bart asked. “I’m really in the wrong time period. What areas _can_ we go to?”

“We could try an’ break into the DEO HQ again,” Kon suggested. “They probably have people to break out.”

“So we want another Secret?” Tim asked, at the same time Bart said “It’s a _vacation_ , not a… heist?”

Kon shrugged. “Hawai’i, then,” he said. “Or we can just play videogames all weekend.”

“I’m not playing videogames all weekend,” Tim said. “If I’m not being productive, I at least want to, like, go somewhere.”

Kon squinted at him, though Tim suspected t was in good spirit. “You used to play games with us all weekend,” he said, no doubt referencing the few crimeless weekends they’d spent in the Tower back when the Teen Titans had just been restarted.

Tim shrugged uncomfortably. There were a lot of things he used to do that he didn’t now. He didn’t say that. He said, instead, “We should do something, though.”

“Yeah,” Kon said. “Well. We could go… what’s _not_ in Gotham?”

“All the good stuff,” Bart offered. Tim rolled his eyes.

“Anywhere that has less air pollution than Gotham is good for me,” he said. In truth, he didn’t mind Gotham’s air much, but he did realize that was probably just because he was used to it.

“Camping,” Kon said.

“I refuse,” Tim responded.

And then there he was, four hours later, in the middle of the woods, watching Bart Allen set up a tent. The view lasted about two seconds.

“Ta-da,” Bart said from inside the tent. Tim had never seen him enter it, but that was pretty much how it worked with speedsters. Kon clapped three times and then opened up the entrance flap for Tim to get in.

Tim crouched down and crawled into the tent. The ground underneath was bumpy and uneven, but they’d brought more than a few blankets to make sitting down more comfortable.

“What camping things should we do?” Bart asked. “And don’t be a loser about a campfire again,” he added to Tim.

It was one time, really, and he’d relented in the end anyway. Tim shrugged in assent anyway.

It had been a week and a half since he and Bart’s first kiss, and things were… not quite great, but almost mostly good, and not much had really changed between the three of them. They were best friends first.

Even though Conner and Bart had apparently been dating for over a month. Things were a little complicated.

After so many years of pushed down feelings and dating other people, it felt weird that Tim could just…

“What’cha smiling at?” Kon asked him, tugging a bag of Camping Stuff™ into the tent.

Tim shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, and leaned in, not to kiss him because he still wasn’t sure where all the boundaries where yet, but just to tap the top of his head against his boyfriend’s (wow) chest.

He wasn’t wearing the Superboy shirt, though that was probably for the best. With Tim’s luck, some random traveller would find them and start rumors on the internet about Tim Drake-Wayne (or, as most reporters and fans tended to call him, just Tim Wayne) dating the Teen Titan Superboy.

His family didn’t even know he was dating Superboy. Or Kid Flash. Tim didn’t think he wanted to explain it to them. He could barely explain it to himself, though the concept was rather simple. He dated Bart and Kon; Bart and Kon dated him and each other; they were all dating.

This probably wouldn’t have worked for any of Tim’s other relationships. Especially with Steph.

“What’s up?” Kon said after a moment of silent laughter. His voice sounded light and… nice. It was nice. Tim could focus on that, the niceness of it all. He didn’t need to think. Even as he explained it to himself, he felt his chest tightening, because he _needed_ to think—

But this was nice.

Bart shook his head, which Tim only knew because he was growing out his hair again and it made kind of a whooshing sound, almost. “Our first date and you’re already asleep,” he lamented. It was a joke, but unfairly true to Tim’s actual dating life.

“You laugh, but that’s one of my signature moves,” he said, head still on Conner’s chest. “You have no idea how many girls have gotten mad at me for falling asleep on dates with them, like in the car, movie theaters… roller coasters…”

“Roller coasters?” Kon asked. “How do you fall asleep on a roller coaster?”

Tim turned the other way so the back of his head rested against Kon instead of the front. He breathed in deeply before answering. “That’s how good at sleeping I am,” he said. “But, like, only in the worst places. When I was a little kid I used to go hide in empty cupboards and fall asleep in them.”

“Like for hide and go seek?” Bart asked. “I played that in a simulation once! But it was just with AIs so they found me pretty quick.”

“No,” Tim said. “Though I was at a birthday party once and we played hide and seek and the other kids forgot about me.”

“That’s... sad,” Kon said.

“Nah, they just got distracted by cake.”

“I would do that,” Bart said. “Um, no offense.”

Tim waved his fingers in a sort of shrug and slid down a bit. Maybe the positioning was a little awkward now. He slid back up. Dammit. Did he look ridiculous?

“Okay, so, I think three people is kind of not many for T or D, but we can still do it,” Bart said, apparently not paying any mind to Tim’s movements. He shouldn’t have expected Bart to pay attention to that, anyway. “Or, I don’t know, twenty questions? Or we can play catch up? Or two truths and a lie.”

“Do that one,” Kon said. “The lying one.”

Bart snapped his fingers and leaned back on his elbows, making a face when he realized they hadn’t put any blankets down. “One sec,” he said, and it really did only take a second for him to grab and display all the blankets they had at their disposal.

They’d stolen them from the Tower, too, so they were the good kind. It turned out that there were in fact blankets made specifically for superheroes. Who would’ve guessed.

“Get up,” Bart said, shooing them. “I need to fully blanket-ify this place.”

“Is it really camping if we’re comfortable?” Kon asked, but was ignored. He hovered up for a few seconds while Bart messed around with the blankets some more, holding Tim with him. It was such a short distance from the ground, but it still felt almost exhilarating.

“Okay, so, my truths but maybe lies are: I’ve read Homestuck,” — Kon laughed at this part — “shut up— I’ve, umm… I’ve never played pinball? So I need to do that, _wait_ I didn’t say that, that wasn’t a hint, uh, and I collect those weird old Coca Cola tin boxes.”

“What Cola boxes?” Kon asked. “Is that the lie? I’ve never seen those.”

“They’re like… boxes? I don’t know, man. It wasn’t the lie.”

“So you haven’t read Homestuck?” Tim asked. “Thank god. I don’t know if I could deal with that.”

“Nah, I thought it looked stupid,” Bart said. “Plus websites take way too long to load. We gotta fix that. Not so I can read Homestuck, but, like, Wikipedia articles. _All_ the Wikipedia articles.”

“Please stop being smart,” Kon requested. “It makes me look bad.”

“That’s what I’m about, babe!” Bart laughed. “Okay, uhhh, who’s next? Tim? You like to lie to Batman and stuff.”

“That is true,” Tim said. “Okay, let me think. One: one time I got a sword put all the way through my body and honestly it was kind of sick. Two: I’m super fucking good at skateboarding. Three: I’m like, _so_ good at putting the past behind me.”

“Oh, that’s the lie,” Kon said, while Bart simultaneously said about the same. “You never let things go, dude.”

“I could,” Tim said. “If I wanted to. I don’t. But I could. Like, if I tried, though?”

Bart hummed a tune.

“Sure,” Kon said. “Were you really sworded?”

“Is that the proper term?” Tim asked rhetorically. “Yeah, this guy called the Widower did it. I’m not married, though, so I don’t know, I feel like he kind of cheated.”

It was a bad joke, but Kon laughed a little anyway. “Was this after Tam Fox said you were engaged?”

“Before, I think, and she said she was engaged with Tim Drake, not Red Robin.”

“Stupid name,” Bart said. “No offense. I’m glad you’re changing your costume.”

“Yeah, the leather was bad,” Kon said. “And the cowl. Fuck the cowl. Why’d you have to wear that thing?”

“I don’t know why you’re attacking me when I didn’t design the costume,” Tim said. “But, yeah, the cowl was kind of uncomfortable anyway. And I felt weird about wearing the costume that the General used to shoot guns at me with.”

“Wouldn’t it be shooting bullets?” Bart asked.

“The who?” Kon asked at the same time. Tim decided to answer Kon, mostly because he didn’t really have anything to say about the semantics of guns and bullets.

“The General,” he said. “Used to be a kid villain but I guess he got a growth spurt. He found the costume in the river after Jason Todd threw it in there and thought it was a sign.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah.” Tim moved around so he was less in Superboy’s lap and more against his shoulder. God, he was so sturdy.

Um. Anyways.

“So how does getting stabbed like that work?” Bart asked. “Is it called stabbing if it goes all the way through or is there a fancy word for it?”

Tim shrugged. “Not sure,” he admitted. “It did really hurt, though. I passed out and then woke up and drove myself and Pru to my hotel and then got kidnapped by the League of Assassins. A lot was going on.”

“Was I dead then?” Kon asked. “‘Cuz I don’t remember any of that.”

“You were,” Tim said, and the conversation ended quickly.

They stayed silent for a few minutes too long. Bart was sat across from Tim, legs out and knees pressed to the ground. Tim was still laying against Kon’s shoulder. His mind was moving slower than normal, and he almost welcomed it. He would have, if he didn’t feel so uncomfortable. He really, really needed to figure his own stuff out so he could just hang out with his friends (boyfriends?) and be normal.

Superhero normal, anyway.

“I really wanna rewatch Rent,” Bart said. It was such an abrupt sentence and thought that Tim wondered if the silence had been as uncomfortable in reality as how he’d imagined it.

“I never watched that,” Kon said. Tim bit his tongue to try and shock himself back awake. Was he dreaming?

“There’s a scene where this woman just starts mooing at a crowd,” Tim said. “It was really hard to watch.”

“I’m her,” Kon said. “Hey, I don’t know, we should do something. As a couple. A couple of three people.”

“A threesome,” Bart said.

“I think,” Tim said, “we should maybe not use that word.”

“Mind in the gutter?” Kon asked, which was just, well, hypocritical, seeing as he’d laughed when Bart suggested the word. Tim doubted they weren’t thinking the same thing.

“One time I was in science class and these kids were like, ‘hey Teach can we do this science project together’ and my teacher said yeah and they went ‘we’re gonna be a threesome!’ and I don’t want to be those kids, Kon.” Tim’s voice edged on hysterical as he finished his admittedly long sentence. It was mostly a joke, though.

“Actually that was me,” Bart said. “I was going so fast I was three people at once.”

“Sure, yeah,” Tim said. “Like, whatever, I guess? I just don’t want Beast Boy making fun of me. Because. It’s Beast Boy.”

“Beast Boy’s gonna make fun of us no matter what,” Kon said. “That or cry ‘cuz his last relationship was a dud. Was that mean?”

“Yeah,” Bart said.

“Yes,” Tim said. Kon shrugged in response.

“Anyway,” he said. “Have either of you ever actually gone on a date?”

“Obviously,” Tim said. “I just fell asleep on a lot of them. But not all of them! But Batman crashed some of them. But there were a few that went fine.”

“God, your dating life is so tragic,” Kon muttered.

“You had sex with your GF and then died,” Bart said. “I don’t know if you can really judge anyone.”

“I went on several real dates with Cassie where I didn’t die,” Kon said. “At least… two.”

“Good job,” Bart said, moving his hands in a clapping motion that didn’t actually make any sound. “I went on dates as an old dude. Man, that was weird. She was pretty, though. And I dated my friend Carol when I was like fourteen? But then some weird stuff happened and then I lived in Denver. I haven’t really texted her since I got back…”

“Wait, how old are you now?” Kon asked. “I mean, like five or six, I know, but actually? Where did the speed aging and the dying land you?”

Bart frowned. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I think I’m… sixteen? Or seventeen. You know it’s actually very confusing.”

“Do you have a fake birth certificate?” Tim asked. “You can check that. Though I don’t know about counting the time you were dead.”

“I was dead for a thousand years,” Kon said. “Just saying. Oh god, wait, does that mean my dead body is still in that Kryptonian healing thing? Gross.”

“You should go put a note on it for your future past self to see,” Bart said.

“But I didn’t see a note,” Kon said.

“That’s just how time travel works sometimes.” Bart nodded knowingly. “Anyway, you want to do couple things? Haven’t I kissed you enough?”

“You’re a loser,” Kon said. “There’s no _enough_ on kissing.”

“I’m extremely touch starved,” Tim said. “Just in case you didn’t know.”

Bart did a laugh that was more like giggle and went forward to Tim, throwing his arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek. Tim was flustered immediately. He almost fell into the fabric of the tent when he lost his support as Kon moved away from Tim.

“Why are you touch starved?” Bart asked, pressing his nose into the crevice behind Tim’s collarbone. Tim could feel him starting to smile and he laughed a little too — it tickled.

“Um, I’m not gonna depress you right now,” he said, and Kon moved toward him again, ending up behind him with one arm stretched around his shoulder and his hand resting on Bart as well. Tim couldn’t help but smile.

Things were better. Things could get better.

Even if they dipped down every so often.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "ell e.  
> 10:03 PM Oct 9  
> i was gonna end this with plot shit but honestly? this thing has no plot beyond tim crashing and healing and they should have an off day. :)"
> 
> oh also note: flash fastest man alive is awful and valerie perez is awful


	7. a world away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Greta.

Tim was simultaneously arguing with people over Batman on Tumblr and researching a murder that had happened near (or possibly in, the reports weren’t clear) one of his old high schools. It probably wasn’t anything that _needed_ the attention of Red Robin, but he’d always had a hard time letting go of his past…

The last school murder he’d investigated hadn’t gone great, so maybe he needed to even up the score.

He was dragging all the relevant information into one file when his doorbell rang. When he opened up the security footage that showed the outside of his front door, he shifted a little, becoming more alert, attentive.

He got up quicker than he should have and for maybe a second and a half felt dizzy, but it went away soon enough. He didn’t quite sprint to the door as he did a fast-paced shuffle over. He was only wearing an oversized shirt and undersized shorts, but he didn’t think she would mind much.

Then again, he didn’t even really know her that well anymore. Had he ever?

“Suzie,” he said as he opened the door. He didn’t have a chance to correct himself before she answered.

“Greta,” she said. Her voice was small and raspy, though it was stronger than it had once been. “But it’s okay. I still call you Robin in my mind sometimes… but there’s a new one now, I think?”

“Uh, yeah,” Tim responded, stepping aside to let her in. “You came all the way to Gotham, um… you didn’t say anything. I could’ve paid for your transportation… did you fly?”

“Not quite,” Greta said in something of a sigh. She followed him over to a sitting area that he didn’t really use much. “Your apartment is… nice,” she told him, probably more out of courtesy than anything else.

“Thanks,” Tim said, again out of courtesy. He really wasn’t sure what to say to Greta — it had been so long since he’d talked to her that he could barely remember the last time he’d seen her. He’d figured after a certain point that she was just done with him. He could definitely understand that.

“Do you, um… want anything to eat?” he asked. What he should’ve asked was ‘what are you doing here’, but being so direct maybe wasn’t the best idea. Even if she wasn’t a superpowered ghost anymore, her glares and hurt looks still stung.

“Sure.” Greta put her knees up and crossed her feet. “Sorry if I’m intruding.”

“It’s fine,” Tim said, walking over to the kitchen. There wasn’t much actual food, but there were at least snacks suitable for a friend coming over. Not suitable for someone living off them, but still. “Uh… I have fruit snacks and graham crackers.”

“I’ll have fruit snacks,” Greta said. “Less messy.”

Tim nodded and grabbed a few packets. He dropped them on the table in front of Greta and sat in the chair beside her. “So… do you need something?”

“Um, yes,” Greta said. “Maybe. I need advice, and I always thought of you as… the advice guy, I guess. Because you always seemed so much smarter than everyone else on our team. I… miss that, a little. Young Justice. Us all being friends.”

“Yeah…” Tim grazed his teeth over his bottom lip. “What do you need advice about, Greta?”

“Well…” Greta sighed deeply and put out her hands, fingers laced together. She was wearing a rather large ring, with a gray stone on it. “The spirits have been… talking to me.”

Tim blinked. “Sorry?”

“I think I told you guys about how I was a warder — guiding spirits into the abyss, being the… portal, from the mortal world to the limbo. You’ve even been inside me — I mean, not _me_ , but the abyss, I mean. Hal, Spectre, told me about it first, and I’d just began to understand what I was meant to do when… well, Doug turned me into a normal human girl. A _living_ normal human girl.”

“Right,” Tim said. “You know his name isn’t actually Doug, right? He’s called Darkseid. Anyway — the spirits are talking to you? What do you mean by that?”

“I was meant to be… a link. Between the mortal and spirit world. But when I came back to life, that — it stopped. And I was glad for it. I never really wanted to do that. I never wanted to be _dead_. But recently, I’ve been having dreams, falling asleep in class, I even blacked out while I was, uh, hanging with Cissie earlier.”

“What kind of dreams?” Tim asked. He wasn’t an expert on the mystical side of things, nor on death, but he _was_ a detective (though the name left a bad taste in his mouth nowadays).

“I couldn’t understand them at first,” Greta said. “It was just… darkness. Darkness and voices, but the voices weren’t speaking English. I kept seeing my death, the electricity, over and over, so I thought they were just nightmares. About Billy, you know. I still have them.”

“Yeah,” Tim said, when she paused for a second. “I have dreams… I haven’t died, but. You know.”

Greta sighed again. She looked… deeply troubled. Not like she was usually the most spunky person around. “Yeah…” she whispered. “I know. But anyway, the more dreams I had, the more I was able to understand them. I didn’t _want_ to understand them… I tried to not sleep, but I just passed out, and when I tried energy drinks and coffee, I just spaced out and had visions instead.” She shook her head. “It was _awful_.”

“Um, sounds awful,” Tim said. “What energy drinks did you have?”

“The more dreams I had, the more I understood them, like I said,” Greta continued, seeming to ignore him. “I started to get the voices… what they were saying, I mean. They were upset. At me. I… they thought I abandoned them. I guess I did. They kept saying… I had to return to them. Be a warder again.”

“And you don’t want to be,” Tim assumed. “What are you asking me?”

Greta ripped open the packet of fruit snacks. “I need to know… should I be a warder again? Because it seems like the world really needs one, from what they’ve told me… but I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die at all.”

“It’s… your choice,” Tim said hesitantly. “Your life. But do you really need to die to do it? To be a warder, I mean. Is it something only the dead can do?”

Greta frowned. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t exactly ask them. All they do is send me messages, like transmissions — it’s not a two way thing.”

“You should find a way to talk to them, then,” Tim said. “I can contact some sorcerers and people with connections to the… abyss? If you want?”

Greta considered this. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Do you have anyone… are people still mad at me for the thing with Doug — Darkseid? I don’t want to... ” she sighed.

“I think I have someone in mind.”

“Of course,” Raven said. “She’s here now?”

“Yes,” Tim said, leading his teammate to the room Greta was staying in. “She’s really nervous. I guess you can probably feel that.”

“I can,” Raven confirmed, pushing open the door. “Greta. I understand you need to speak with the spirits of the abyss?”

Greta was sitting cross legged on the floor. The room was one of the unused bedrooms for visitors, and only had a bed with no sheets or pillows and one table. It served their purposes, though.

“Yeah,” Greta said. “You’re Raven?”

“Yes.” Raven drifted into a floating lotus position. “I’m going to establish a link to the spirit’s realm. If you want, I can bring Tim… Red Robin in as well. Having a link to the mortal world would help, seeing as the both of us are not quite attached to it. Not like he is.”

Greta visibly swallowed. “I do,” she said, glancing over to Tim. “If that’s okay?”

“Of course it is,” Tim said. “I said I’d always be there for you, Greta. Even if we’ve grown apart… I want to help you.”

Greta’s eyes flitted open wider. “Thank you,” she said. She looked at Raven. “You, too.”

“It’s nothing,” Raven said. “I’m happy to help you. I’m… I sense that you’re looking to atone, for things you’ve done in the past. I can relate to that. I’ll do what I can for you in our meeting place, Greta, but remember that this is about you and it is your choice.”

Greta nodded. “I’m ready,” she told Raven.

Raven took a moment to watch Greta and then nodded, eyes beginning to glow. The room went quiet, and Tim felt his heart rate begin to slow, something that often happened when Raven was drawing energy and emotion from others. Slowly the light seemed to fade, until Tim was surrounded in complete darkness.

He was, he knew, entering a space between the abyss and the living world. He would have been scared and inconsolable if not for Raven’s influence. The last time he’d been brought into the abyss, he’d nearly died, or maybe he’d wanted to die — it seemed like more of the same in his head.

Blue and white lights began to pop up, illuminating a scene in front of him. Greta, floating, still in the cross-legged position she’d been in on the bed. Raven was opposite her, in the air with her eyes screwed shut. She took a breath as she opened them, and her light almost blinded Tim for a second before it died down.

Greta looked around, looking startled. “This is different,” she started, “than I’m used to. What is this place?”

“This is a meeting place,” Raven said. Her voice seemed even breathier than usual. “This is a place where I meditate. It is just on the edge of the abyss, an anchor to the mortal world. It… calms me, but it may not calm you. Everyone feels differently in this place.”

“I don’t know,” Greta said. “But it’s not scary. How do we contact the spirits?”

The change in her tone surprised Tim, but if it shook Raven, she did nothing to show that. Greta was suddenly more alert, more confident. She was so small – she’d grown since the last time he’d seen her, but she was still barely at five feet – but Tim was forcefully reminded of how much power she’d once wielded.

“Call out to them,” Raven said. “In your mind or otherwise. I can sense their power in you. They will hear.”

Greta took a breath and closed her eyes. Her hands were linked together by three of her fingers. It took minutes for her open her eyes again.

Tim could hear wind, now, but the longer and harder he listened, the less it sounded like wind and the more it sounded like... voices. Whispering voices, dozens of them, maybe hundreds. In the back of his mind, he could feel something like terror, but Raven’s presence thankfully eroded that away.

He was so grateful for her. Even if she was kind of creepy.

Tim could hear, just barely, a voice, saying — “ _You need to return to us, warder,”_ and then Greta stiffened, just slightly, as if she’d been shocked with just a jolt of static.

“She’s having a vision,” Raven murmured. “But I don’t know what. If she gets in too deep…”

Secret — she wasn’t Greta any longer, not really — began to shake, slightly at first, and then her whole body was shivering. Her hands were now clenched into fists, and her face was frozen in an alarmed stare. She wasn’t looking at anything, but she reacted nonetheless.

“I see,” she whispered. “But I don’t have my powers anymore. How can I be a warder without them?”

The voice surrounded them, a raspy, broken thing: “ _We can return your powers to you._ ”

Greta looked scared.

“I don’t want to die,” she said, almost pleading. “Please don’t let me die. Please don’t kill me again.”

The room was quiet for a while, disturbingly so. Finally one voice, stronger than all the voices before, spoke up.

“You are the void between worlds,” it said. “You can live and die at the same time. Be alive and be dead, warder. Just be.”

Greta didn’t get a chance to speak before she stopped floating and fell, back into the darkness and disappeared.

“No,” Raven said. “You need to call her back here, Tim. She’ll be lost to the abyss–”

“Greta,” Tim said, and then, louder, “ _Greta._ ”

And he woke up.

It was dark in the room, though not completely devoid of light as it had been when the ritual began. The sky outside the windows was dark — how long had it been?

“We’re back,” Raven said. “I… Greta. How are you feeling?”

Greta was staring at her hands, eyes unfocused. “Greta,” she repeated. “No… right now… call me _Secret._ ”

 

“I swear I haven’t seen Greta in ages,” Bart said. “How’s she doing?”

“I’m not really sure,” Tim admitted. “It was… weird. And awkward. And _weird._ Even before Raven took us to… wherever she took us to, it was weird. Greta ate, like, half my gummy fruits.”

Kon snorted. “ _That’s_ what you’re focused on?”

Tim shrugged. “It’s weird seeing her eat,” he explained. “She didn’t do that when she was, well, dead.”

Bart sighed thoughtfully and leaned back. “Lots has changed,” he said.

“Yeah,” Tim said. “Lots.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is one of the longest ones. not the longest, though. last chapter is over 3.5k


	8. reunions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There must be some kind of superhero babysitting service,” Kon said.
> 
> “Nah,” Bart said. “All the super-babies are either raised by villains, killed, or aged up.”
> 
> “God damn,” Anita said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you tell i'm a young justice stan

“I’m so excited!” Bart said. “I haven’t seen Cissie in so long! Like, a month! Or three months! I saw her when I came back cuz I thought she probably missed me _and she did_ but I haven’t seen her since. I think. When’s she coming? We should get snacks!”

Bart was in a particularly energetic mood.

“I think at three,” Tim said. “And Cassie’s getting snacks now. Anita’s getting here at four, she says she has to wait for a babysitter.”

“I can’t believe she has to raise her own parents,” Kon said. “Also, isn’t it kind of weird to raise them together?”

“What do you mean?” Bart asked, calming down.

“Like, what’s that thing? Western affect?”

“That’s a theory,” Tim said. “Not proven or anything. Though I guess it is kind of weird. I don’t know how exactly she’s raising them… who knows how they’ll end up.”

“That must _suck_ ,” Bart said. “Being a teenager, having to raise babies who are actually your parents. I’m so glad my parents were born in the future.”

“What if Barry and Iris have kids now?” Kon asked. “Your family is so messed up.”

Bart frowned. “Stop messing with my mind,” he said. “I’m still trying to figure out the family tree. Why are there so many twins?”

Before Tim or Kon could try to respond, the door flung open, Cassie running through. Her whip was around her like an extremely long necklace.

“Ciss is here!” she said, sprinting past them to get to, presumably, the ground floor. “She had Greta transport her, I think you heard about her being a superhero or whatever again. I’m gonna grab her.”

“Too late,” said an amused voice. Cissie King-Jones, the former Arrowette and current Olympic star archer, was standing in the doorway, holding a bow with one hand and a backpack in the other. “Hey, guys!”

Greta was standing behind her, looking reserved (as she often was). She waved when she noticed Tim looking at her.

“Hi, Cissie!” Cassie said. “It’s so good to see you!”

“I saw you two days ago,” Cissie said. “We go to school together, Cass.”

Cassie smiled. “Well,” she said. “It’s still been too long.”

“What are _you_ talking about?” Bart said, pushing past Cassie. “It’s been like months for me! And I met you before her!”

Cissie smiled awkwardly and fondly. “Well, we should hang out more, then,” she said. “You do have superspeed. Couldn’t you run over any time you want?”

“That’s true,” Bart admitted. “And hi, Greta! How are you? I heard you’ve been doing spooky stuff.”

“Um, yeah,” Greta said. “I’m the warder again. Death, kind of. It’s been a week and I’ve already herded a lost soul to the abyss. She committed suicide but got stuck in this world because her brother did a ritual. It didn’t work.”

Time seemed to pause for a second as they all glanced at each other awkwardly.

“Well, that’s a conversation stopper,” Cassie muttered.

“I’m having some serious deja vu right now,” Cissie said. “Has this happened before?”

“Suicide and rituals?” Greta asked. “No, it’s probably happened. But anyway, we’re doing a reunion?”

“We were gonna do some catching up,” Kon said. “What’s been going on since YJ broke up, you know. You two and Anita haven’t been, like, up in the superhero news, so we figured if ya wanted, we could tell you all the shit that’s been happening our side of the… you know.”

“Like, nya,” Bart said. Kon elbowed him, but all that he got was a laugh.

“That sounds good to me,” Cissie said. “All I know is stuff on the news and stuff Cassie’s ranted about.”

“Sometimes I get heated,” Cassie muttered. “So, we have to wait another hour for Anita, I volunteered to fly over and pick her up. I thought we could watch some TV and you guys can weigh in on Tim’s costume change.”

“Tim’s costume change?” Cissie asked. “You’re changing out of the cowl? You know, I kind of liked it. Practical. I like the colors, too.”

“I’m keeping the color scheme,” Tim told her. “But everyone hates the cowl and I said I’d get rid of it after I got Batman back, and he’s been back for a while… so. Yeah.”

“Why after Batman got back?” Cassie asked, tilting her head in a kind of confused way. Tim twisted his mouth.

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” he said. What he wanted to say was that Cissie and Greta were still his friends, but he really wasn’t comfortable talking about that with them. How he’d been during the time Batman had been missing, after Kon and Bart and his dad had died, after… everything.

Somehow, though, Tim was pretty sure he’d been in a worse place a few weeks ago than he’d been during that year. He didn’t know how that was possible.

“You should have a cape that’ll keep you warm,” Greta suggested. “Like… warm cloth on one side. Fleece.”

“We have things like that for missions in cold climates,” Tim said. “And my suit’s insulated. But that’s an okay idea. I can think of situations where that’d be useful.”

He was speaking too formally for anyone to be comfortable, but he couldn’t apologize for that without seeming overly formal again. He was constantly stuck in this loop. Trapping himself. He could almost blame his mother for it, but didn’t.

Respect the dead and whatnot.

“You should have a hood,” Cissie said. “The cool heroes wear hoods.”

“Robin wears a hood,” Tim said. “Well, I mean, obviously. I mean the new Robin wears a hood. He’d just accuse me of copying him.”

“You’re the only one with siblings here,” Bart noted.

Greta cleared her throat. “Not the only one.”

“Right.” Bart glanced around, looking a little lost. “Well, I have a cousin. And a cousin once removed. And two cousins twice removed.”

“Your family is weird,” Cissie told him. “But it sounds cool, having a big family. It’s always just been me and my mom. And my dad, before anyway.”

The conversation continued on like that, with vague comments about things that had happened in the past few years, most of them to be explained when Anita got to the Tower. It wasn’t quite like it had been once, when they’d all been part of Young Justice, before everything got so serious, but it was close enough.

Finally, it was close to four o’ clock, and Cassie left to get Anita. It only took about twenty-ish minutes for them to get back, and when Anita and Cassie walked into the room, the response was immediate.

“‘Nita!” Cissie yelled, standing up. “So good to see you.”

“You too!” Anita said, moving in for a hug. Cissie had put a hand up for a high five, but she quickly adjusted and embraced her friend. “God, it’s been so long since we’ve all been together.”

“Way too long,” Bart put in, jumping over the couch and running towards them. “And I know time is weird for me ‘cuz I got superspeed and all but I’m pretty sure it’s been too long for everyone.”

“Definitely,” Kon said. “And stop hogging the attention.”

“Says you,” Bart muttered, but moved aside for Kon to get to Anita.

“Hi, Neets,” Kon said. “I feel like we didn’t hang out enough back in YJ. We should do it more in the now times.”

Anita laughed and put an arm around Kon. “You aren’t flirting with me, are you?” she asked. “I remember _you_ being quite the… well, you were you.”

Kon laughed, and Tim found himself snorting too. Kon really had been so much to deal with. Kon said, “Nah. I’m dating someone, anyway.”

Tim saw Cassie raise her eyebrows and he squirmed his feet a little. Bart made a noise that was almost definitely a giggle, but no one paid any mind to it. Their relationship wasn’t exactly a secret, but they weren’t going around telling every Titan they came across that they were dating.

It was mostly to see how long it took them to figure it out.

“Well, good for you,” Anita said. “I’m a hundred percent serious when I say I haven’t dated anyone since Slobo.”

“Did dating him scare you off from the whole thing?” Cassie muttered. It was only said quietly because nobody was quite sure what Anita and Slobo had been when Slobo had died. If Anita took offense to her words, it would get awkward.

Anita snorted. “More like all the teens I know who aren’t you think I’m a single mom of twins. No one wants to date that.”

“Find some superheroes to date,” Bart suggested. “We could do a speed dating thing.”

“Um, I don’t think so,” Anita said. “I don’t even do heroics anymore. I mean, I miss it, but I have to take care of my parents.”

“Do you not have any family that will help?” Cassie asked. She was sat on the back of the couch, leaned forward to look more closely at her friend.

“I mean, there’s Maad,” Anita responded. “But it’s weird for him, I guess. He’s known my dad for so long, and now he’s a toddler… I don’t know. He’s trying. I’m trying. It’s hard.”

“There must be some kind of superhero babysitting service,” Kon said.

“Nah,” Bart said. “All the super-babies are either raised by villains, killed, or aged up.”

“God damn,” Anita said.

Cassie opened her mouth as if to say something, but before she could, her – and Tim’s and Kon’s and Bart’s – Titan communicator started buzzing. Cassie pulled it out of her pocket (her newest costume involved a tracksuit jacket with a stylized W on it).

“Solstice needs help,” Cassie said. “She’s fighting a big gun over near the Wayne Enterprises, uh, Super Division. We gotta go, but if you guys wanna...”

“Hey, I’ll come,” Anita said. “Empress has _got_ to get back out there at some point.”

Cissie sighed. “I’ll watch at a distance and maybe shoot some arrows if I get bored,” she said.

“I’ll come along,” Greta said, almost at a whisper. “It’s been a while.”

“Alright,” Cassie said, beginning to grin. “Well… Young Justice is back for the day.”

The fight didn’t last nearly as long as Tim had hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment? :) ♡


	9. and you call me by that name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You want to argue with me?” Tim asked, though it wasn’t really much of a surprise. “Damian, look. I’m almost eighteen. I’m not going to fight with a ten year old forever. Not just because you’re seven years younger than me and it’s weird, but because it’s useless. We’re supposed to work together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wasn't happy with this chapter when i wrote it and i'm not happy with it now. i think it's definitely the weakest of the later chapters but the next/last one is long and (in my opinion) pretty good so hopefully that'll make up for it. have fun reading!

Nowadays Tim hated being called ‘Detective’.

Obviously he was a detective. He’d been trained by the world’s greatest (which made for some annoying jokes). But being called it, as a title, was… not something Tim cared for. Not anymore, anyways.

Not because Ra’s al Ghul had taken up using it to refer to Tim. Why would Red Robin care what Ra’s al Ghul called him? He was just a villain. A rather major one, of course, who was dangerous and who Tim felt incredibly uncomfortable around, but still just a villain.

“Why did he call _you_ Detective?” Damian, Robin, hissed at Tim. “I was under the impression that he called my father that.”

‘My father’. Tim hated it when Damian said that. Like Bruce wasn’t anyone else’s father. Tim had bought Father’s Day presents for Bruce. Dick had been Bruce’s kid before Damian had even existed. He was as much their father as he was Damian’s.

Tim wished, _wished_ , he could fully believe that. He did, mostly, but sometimes it wasn't enough.

“He calls me that sometimes, too,” Tim said back, voice low. Ra’s al Ghul was situated above them, on a balcony. He had a sword tipped over the edge. “It doesn’t matter. We need to get out of here.”

“You’re not going to fight him?” Damian asked. It was somehow a question, a sneer, and a exclamation all at once.

“We got what we came for,” Red Robin said. “It’s not like we can get him into custody. And I really don’t want to be around him.”

“I’m hurt, Timothy,” Ra’s said. Tim cursed in his head.

“Because I care,” Red Robin said. “Right.”

They were in a palace type place, home of an artifact that the League of Assassins had been interested in. Apparently it was so interesting Ra’s al Ghul had come himself for it, which Tim found… suspicious.

“After all,” Ra’s said, moving out of sight. Tim gripped his bo staff tighter. “I came here for you.”

Right. And there was why he’d been suspicious.

“We should get the staff out of here,” Robin muttered to Tim. “Fighting my grandfather is a bad idea. The last time _you_ fought him you got kicked through a window and nearly let yourself die.”

Tim rolled his eyes behind his mask. “I don’t want to fight him and you right now,” he said back. “There’s at least two assassins on the way back to the jet. We need to–”

“Let’s go, then,” Robin said, and dashed off.

“I swear to god,” Tim muttered, surveying the area around him to see if Ra’s al Ghul had appeared anywhere nearby. When he didn’t see anyone, he followed Robin as quietly as he could.

“You were slow,” Damian muttered when Tim got to him.

“I was checking,” Tim started, then shook his head. “Never mind. Do you see the assassins?”

“I heard them talking,” Damian said. “Loudly, like imbeciles. We can knock them out easily.”

Red Robin nodded slowly and made a motion for them to move out. The two assassins were actually arguing with a voice that Tim couldn’t hear; it was probably on a comm. Who, Tim wasn’t entirely sure, but likely it was one of the higher up assassins in the League.

Robin and Red Robin knocked them both out simultaneously.

“They were talking to someone,” Tim said. “We need to go before they realize they’re out.”

Robin nodded and they both started toward the jet they’d used. Technically, Tim had stolen it from Bruce, but he doubted he would care. He probably wouldn’t even notice just one jet missing.

In the jet, Robin said, “Why did he call you Detective?”

“I didn’t exactly ask him to, Damian,” Tim said.

“I know that,” Damian scoffed, though Tim wasn’t sure he did. “But _why_ did he?”

Tim slumped down in his seat. “We worked together while Bruce was dead,” he said. “Fake dead. And I say worked – I mean he was the only one who believed me when I said he was alive, and he was willing to help me. I got access to all of his files and basically wrecked his entire… system. Then I foiled his plot to take over W.E. Now I guess I’ve impressed him.”

Damian was quiet. Then, “I could not impress him.”

“Well, I don’t think betraying him to work for Batman helped much,” Tim said, then winced internally. He wasn’t sure if that had been a joke, but even if it was, he and Damian weren’t exactly friendly enough to joke with each other.

Damian made a noise that was in between a scoff and a snort. “Right,” he said, and put one foot up on the counter in front of him. “Now he doesn’t have an heir. Or someone to body snatch, whatever you want to call it.”

He looked angry, but Tim was pretty sure he was mostly hurt.

And he didn’t know what to say.

“I know we haven’t been… getting along,” he said. “At all. And I probably haven’t helped things. You haven’t, either, by the way.”

“What are you getting at?” asked Damian, spiteful, still masking… something.

“I really didn’t want things to be this way between us,” Tim said, almost frustrated. He refused to let himself be. “I’ve been trying to… figure things out. Tie up loose ends, with Batgirl, with… I don’t want us to hate each other forever.”

Damian gritted his teeth and locked his jaw. “I’m not… I don’t hate you, Drake. Too much effort.”

“You know nobody’s here but us,” Tim said. “You don’t have to act tougher than you are.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“Fine.” Tim shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You— Damian, I’m trying to reach out to you here.”

“I don’t need your pity,” Damian gritted out.

Tim sighed. “I’m not pitying you,” he muttered. “I’m trying— I’m trying to fix things between us. Maybe not fix, but… I want it to get better. You know we’re going to drive Dick insane arguing all the time.”

“Grayson can handle it,” Damian muttered.

“You _want_ to argue with me?” Tim asked, though it wasn’t really much of a surprise. “Damian, look. I’m almost eighteen. I’m not going to fight with a ten year old forever. Not just because you’re seven years younger than me and it’s weird, but because it’s _useless_. We’re supposed to work together.”

“You could start by not going by Robin,” Damian suggested.

“Red Robin,” Tim corrected. “And I went by it before you. Also I didn’t even come up with the name Red Robin.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Damian muttered, head turned away from Tim. “That was probably a joke anyway.”

“Like you could make a joke,” Tim said. He hoped his tone conveyed that his own words were something of a joke, but he wasn’t sure. Especially with Damian, who more often than not took even innocuous words as an attack.

“Right,” Damian said. “I’ll stick with trying to be a better Robin than you.”

Tim paused. “Was that a sincere… something?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Damian swerved his chair around, but it kept going so that he was just spinning.

“Wow,” Tim said. “You really could learn.”

“Go brew coffee or something,” Damian said, continuing to spin. “Leave me.”

“You really like that spinny chair, huh?” Tim snorted and stood up. “Don’t get dizzy.”

“I could never!”

Who knew the demon kid could be something related to an actual kid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here you see a few things:  
> 1\. me half-assing fight scenes and plot things that aren't character vs self  
> 2\. tim being lowkey traumatized by the events of red robin and not quite Getting that  
> 3\. me trying to make tim and damian be friends because they are just ridiculous
> 
> also, talk to me about my feelings about tim and ra's al ghul [in red robin]! because dc rebooted, none of the stuff with them was ever really addressed. considering how dc has dealt with similar topics (ESPECIALLY rape), though, they probably wouldn't have done anything with it in the first place.
> 
> my tumblr is @timetrees. don't forget to comment if you can!


	10. this is where you wanted to be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim sighed. “Yeah, I’m popular now,” he said, almost joking. “Being a billionaire gives you friends, it turns out. That’s a joke. I doubt they’re using me for my money.”
> 
> “We are!” Bart said.
> 
> “Right, well, I stand corrected,” Tim said.
> 
> (Tim turns eighteen.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow! last chapter. 20k words. how do you guys feel??? i feel sad because now there will be less comments. i guess i have to write/upload more fic for that.
> 
> anyway! this chapter could also be called "tim's friends forget how to have secret identities for a hot minute there". they're having fun.

Eight years ago.

Tim Drake was ten years old. It was a few months, close to a year, since he’d discovered that Dick Grayson was Robin, Bruce Wayne was Batman, Batgirl—

Well, he wasn’t actually sure who Batgirl was back then, but that was beside the point.

He was a lonely kid, though he hadn’t really been alone. At ten years old, he’d been friends with Sebastian, and he’d hung out with a few other kids in his fourth grade class, though he hadn’t seen them since school had ended, and even before that they’d only really talked to him in class, never inviting him to play 4-Square during recess or tag during morning break.

Tim had Ives, though, even if Sebastian thought he was weird when he giggled during any conversation about Batman. Sebastian couldn’t know about Batman and Robin – he wouldn’t be able to keep it to himself, if he even believed Tim.

And he wouldn’t.

Later, some time into fifth grade, Sebastian decided that his first name was too formal and ‘hard to say’, so he requested to be called Ives instead. Sebastian was his grandfather’s name, which was the only reason he’d allowed himself to go by it. Tim, who had gone through two or three names before deciding on Timothy, adapted quickly, though Maria from Keystone City made fun of him for reasons Tim hadn’t been able to figure out.

For a long time, Tim had never really been able to figure out bullying. It took a few years to get when people were bullying him and not just being rude or unthoughtful. He didn’t understand why people wouldn’t just get along, either.

(Eight years later, Tim kind of got it.)

“Happy birthday, Tim,” soon-to-be Ives said. “Where’s Jack and Janet?”

Tim yawned. “Not sure,” he said. “I think Egypt. But they’ll be back next week, they said they had a present for me. An’ they, they, uh.” he started rocking back and forth. “Dad said he’d take me somewhere, I can decide where.”

“Fun,” Ives said. “How’s it feel to be ten?”

“Umm.” Tim jabbed his fork into his cake. “Good. Not much diff’rent from nine. There’s not really anything I can do different.”

“Yeah,” Ives shrugged. “And you’re younger than everyone in class anyway. No one’ll be impressed.”

“Thanks,” Tim muttered, squirming. “What do you want to do tonight?”

“I don’t know if my mom will let me sleep over if you’re parents aren’t here,” Ives said. “But I can get picked up at eight. Maybe nine if I beg.”

“You could say my parents _are_ home,” Tim said. “She’s not going to ask to talk to them, right?”

Ives frowned. “Probably not,” he admitted. “But I don’t want to lie to her. She’s my mom.”

“Oh,” Tim said. He was quiet for a few moments, mostly thinking. Was it not normal to tell lies to your parents every so often? There were a lot of things that his mom would be mad at him for if he told her the truth about. “Well… I guess you can stay until nine, then.”

“Cool.” Ives took a bite of his cake slice. “Um… is it only going to be the two of us?”

“Yeah,” Tim answered. “Why?”

“Just… that’s a big cake.” Ives pointed over to the kitchen counter where the rest of the cake sat. “Are we going to eat all of that?”

“Um… not all of it.” Tim frowned and finally stopped rocking. “Unless you want to. I was gonna bring some to school and give it to Mrs. B.”

“Teacher’s pet,” Ives muttered, though it was probably a joke. “I like the age ten ‘cuz you can say any kind of years and it’ll be easy to say what age you’ll be then.”

“That’s true,” Tim said. “What are you gonna do in eight years?”

“Vote,” Ives said. “And smoke cigars like in those movies.”

Tim wrinkled his nose. “Don’t do that,” he said. “You’ll… die or something.”

Ives let out a deep and dramatic sigh. “If we’re friends in eight years, then I won’t,” he said. “If we aren’t, I’m gonna… eat ‘em. Eat ‘em all.”

“You’re manipulating me to stay your friend,” Tim said. “And why wouldn’t I be your friend in eight years?”

Ives shrugged. “Not everyone stays friends,” he said.

“Well, we are gonna,” Tim said.

“‘Kay,” Ives replied. “Do you wanna watch a movie? We can watch somethin’ our parents wouldn’t let us watch, ‘cuz it’s your birthday and your parents aren’t home.”

“Cool,” Tim said. He bit into the cake again and made a screeching sound – there was a chocolate chip that was a bit too hard for his liking.

“Don’t _scream_ ,” Ives complained.

“S’rry,” Tim mumbled. “Let me see what movies we have.”

 

And then, three years later…

“Please tell me I’m not going to be the only one here, Tim,” Ives said.

Tim laughed a little hysterically. “Of course not,” he said. “I invited Callie too, she’ll just be here later. It’s not going to be like last year.”

“Or the year before,” Ives said. “Or before that… or, hey, before that…”

“It was not just you at my ninth,” Tim said. “I’m sure of it. There was someone else.”

“Pretty sure the other person was your mom,” Ives muttered. “Man, she can be creepy.”

Tim rolled his eyes. He had better things – no. Not better. Just… more important. He had more important things to do than host a birthday party with only two other people. Jason Todd – _Robin_ – was… missing. Maybe dead. Hopefully just missing.

But probably dead. Batman was getting more and more reckless, more and more… unconstrained. He needed help, and maybe that wasn’t Tim’s place to say, but it was true. Batman needed help – not Tim’s help, Tim really doubted he could do anything but reach out, but he did need help.

Or else Batman was going to end up killing someone, and Batman _couldn’t_ kill.

“You gonna tell me what’s going on with you?” Ives asked. “You’ve been acting weird for days. Your mom isn’t gonna pull you out of school again, is she?”

“We’re not even in school yet,” Tim said. “It’s July. And no, she’s not. I’ve just had a lot on my mind.”

Ives rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whatever,” he said. “So. Eighth grade. Thirteen. You gonna make a Facebook?”

Tim let out a startled laugh. “A Facebook?” he asked. “Um, no. I mean, maybe, but it’s not exactly at the top of my list. I might make a Tumblr, I guess. It’s not that important.”

Tim actually had already made a Batman-centric Tumblr account a few months prior, mostly to keep up with Bat sightings and to get to know other people’s opinions on Batman, and also, well… Tim had never been _asked_ to steer the general public away from Bruce Wayne, but he’d never been asked not to.

Of course he’d never been asked not to. Batman didn’t even know he existed.

“Okay, well, all the cool kids in school have a group chat and I heard they look through your Twitter account to see if you’re cool enough to get added.” Ives cracked a knuckle. “You’ve got charms and stuff, right? All the girls last year thought you were _adorable_.”

“That’s because I’m short and a treasure,” Tim said.

“Since when are _you_ a treasure?” Ives laughed.

“I’m the only trans kid,” Tim said, not quite bitterly or reproachfully but something nearer to it.

“I’m trans,” Ives said.

“Yeah, but everyone hates you because you killed Snickers the guinea pig in sixth grade,” Tim said. “Everyone ignored you so hard after that they forgot you existed.”

“You are an _ass_ ,” Ives said. “I didn’t even kill Snickers. I told you it was that high school jock.”

Tim shrugged. “Well, everyone else didn’t know that,” he said. Despite himself, he was starting to feel a little better, not about Batman but maybe about himself, a little bit. “I’m sure you can redeem yourself this year.”

Ives sighed. “Sure, yeah,” he said. “When’s Callie getting here?”

“Oh yeah,” Tim said, feeling ready to tease. “You like her.”

“Shut up, dude,” Ives said. “What are we gonna do ‘til she gets here? Watch TV, play video games… talk about your weird man-crush on Bruce Wayne…”

“What man-crush?” Tim asked, taken aback.

“You keep searching him on Google,” Ives said. “You have a close-up on his face printed out and put in a folder.”

Tim frowned and furrowed his eyebrows. “How’d you find that folder?” he asked.

He’d actually forgotten about the folder. He’d been using it to mark changes in Bruce Wayne’s appearance and personality. His facade had slowly been breaking. If no one helped him, someone would find out he was Batman – someone who wasn’t like Tim, who would use the information for their own gain.

“Tim?” Ives asked. “You in there?”

Tim startled back to the real world. He probably hadn’t been thinking long. Still…

“I’m good,” he said, and began to make a plan.

Tim was good at plans.

 

When Tim turned sixteen, he’d actually completely forgotten that it was his birthday.

When he turned seventeen, he was traveling the globe with Batman and Nightwing. They hadn’t even really celebrated. There hadn’t been much to celebrate, back then.

His eighteenth birthday, well… some people were determined to make things different. Better.

This was the first time a lot of people were coming to his apartment. Tim made sure nobody could get into his ‘Robin Cave (2.0)’, though Ives was the only civilian that was coming over. He could have invited Zo or maybe even Bernard, but it just would’ve made things awkward.

“There’s a lot of people you don’t know,” Tim warned Ives. “I mean, Steph’s here, you know her–”

“Are you two dating again?” Ives interrupted, stopping on the steps up to the entrance door.

“Um, no,” Tim said. “Anyway, Steph’s here, and my, uh, Dick Grayson is going to come in a bit, and my – Cass is, too, I’ve mentioned her to you…”

“Tim,” Ives said.

“Yeah?”

“You can just call them your family.”

Tim blinked. “Oh,” he said. “I just… they _are_ my family, and I can call them that around some people, but… you’ve met my real family. Like, you’ve _met_ them. You know what my dad was like before the accident and you’ve met my mom… it feels weird.”

“You’re an orphan, man,” Ives said. “You’re allowed to find another family. I mean, you’d be allowed to find another one even if you weren’t an orphan, but it just might be a little weird. Anyway.”

“Thanks,” Tim said. “I’m sorry about… how distant I’ve been, lately.”

“Lately?” Ives scoffed. “I mean, I was mad about it at first, for a while, but after that I was mostly just worried.”

“Yeah…” Tim shook his head. “I’ve just had a lot going on.”

“Story of your life,” Ives said. “So this is it.”

Tim opened the door to his apartment. Inside was a myriad of superheroes and… well, just superheroes.

In the lounge, on the couch and the armchairs, were Kon, Bart, Cassie, and Cass, who was sitting and reading one of Tim’s Star Trek novelizations. Then, in the kitchen, was Steph.

“Hey guys,” Tim said, getting their attention. “This is Ives.”

Bart stood up way too fast, then realized himself and slowed down. “Hi, Ives!” he said. “I’m Bart.”

“Uh, hi,” Ives said. “You look… familiar.”

“Am I?” Bart asked. “I guess I’ve got one of those faces. Just like my… cousin. Barry. He’s also got one of those faces. We’re a whole family of faces, really.”

Kon snickered into his hand.

“You met him once.” Tim had to intercept before things got too messy. “That ski trip a few years back, he was there. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ives said, the realization literally showing on his face. “Yeah, in Virginia, with Ari and your butler guy. You were the guy with the weird hair. Um… hasn’t really changed, has it?”

“I’m Jewish,” Bart said.

“He actually had short hair for a while,” Kon said, standing up much slower than Bart had. “Hey. I’m Kon...er. Conner Kent.”

Ives raised his eyebrows. “So you’re friends with jocks now?” he asked Tim. “I mean, I can get track or something, but this guy is a total Karl. I guess without blonde hair.”

“Karl’s _dead_ , Ives,” Tim said. “And Conner’s not really a jock. Just… big. He comes from a family of farmers.”

Ives laughed. “Farmers!” he said. “What’s a farmer doing in Gotham?”

“Oh, I’m not a farmer,” Kon said quickly. “Just my family, they are. My, uh, cousin is a reporter in Metropolis. And, hey, don’t stereotype me ‘cuz I’m bigger than you. I have feelings and shit.”

“Right,” Ives said. “Sorry, I guess. I guess the glasses should’ve tipped me off. And, uh, Steph I know, what’s up?”

“Not much,” Steph said, walking over from the kitchen. “Busy with college, mostly. One of my professors is a real hardass…”

Cass laughed something short and sudden. Ives turned around to look at her and Cassie.

“And you’re Cassandra Wayne, right?” he asked. “I’ve heard of you. Tim’s favorite sister. You live in Hong Kong?”

“Yes,” Cass said. “But… might move back sometime.”

“Sometime soon, I hope!” Steph said, grinning at her. She was wearing lipstick that was almost purple but not quite.

“And you’re…?” Ives was looking at Cassie.

“Cassie,” she said to introduce herself. “I know, there’s already a Cassandra here. Just remember me as the blonde one. And, uh, hey, three blondes in one room. More than usual.”

“Yeah,” Ives said slowly. “So, Tim, lots more people here than your last, say, _ten_ birthday parties.”

Tim sighed. “Yeah, I’m popular now,” he said, almost joking. “Being a billionaire gives you friends, it turns out. That’s a joke. I doubt they’re using me for my money.”

“We are!” Bart said.

“Right, well, I stand corrected,” Tim said.

“What were your… previous… birthdays like?” Cass asked. “I never celebrated mine. Or knew it.”

Ives gave her a weird and concerned look, but Tim and Cass both ignored it.

“He’d literally just invite me over and make me eat a giant cake Ms. Mac would make,” Ives said. “Half the time his parents weren’t even there. We’d just sit alone in front of a TV watching movies our parents wouldn’t want us to watch if they were there. Since age ten, I swear.”

“What movies?” Bart asked.

“That sounds a lot like my childhood,” Steph said.

“Thanks, guys,” Tim said. “Love the support. Anyway, I’m not really sure what we should do for a, uh… birthday party. I mean, I’m not a little kid.”

“Let’s tell embarrassing stories,” Steph suggested. “About you. I’ll start. Who here remembers when I was pregnant?”

Tim raised his hand. Nobody else reacted other than glancing at each other in confusion (barring Cass, who must have been told at some point).

“Right, so.” Steph laughed. “I tell Tim, I’m like, hey loser boyfriend, guess what, I’m preggers. You know the deal. And he, I kid you fucking _not_ , goes, ‘it’s not mine, is it?’”

Ives started to laugh and ended up choking. “Tim,” he snickered, “you don’t even have a _dick._ ”

Tim sighed. “I wasn’t really,” he started, then shook his head. “There was, like, adrenaline, and I was surprised, and I’d just watched a bunch of bad romance movies, so it was, like. Look.”

“You really don’t have the best sex ed in Gotham, do you?” Cassie asked.

“Where are you from?” Ives asked her.

“I live in San Fran,” she answered. “But I used to live in Gateway, Georgetown… a few places, really.”

“Gateway,” Ives repeated. “Cool, like… where Wonder Woman used to hang out?”

“Uh, yeah,” Cassie said, creeping up on alarm. “I used to be a, uh, pretty big WW fan, but I grew out of it.”

“Right, yeah,” Ives said. “Don’t we all. I mean, when we were kids, Tim was the _hugest_ Batman fanatic, but he barely ever talks about Batman nowadays. Though he did get pretty mad a few years ago when Bernard said Batman has a secret supply of orphans that he trains as child soldiers or whatever.”

Cass squeaked. Steph put a hand over her mouth to hide her own rather extreme reaction.

“Oh, tell me more about Batman fanatic Tim Drake,” Kon said. “I’m partial to Guardian, honestly.”

“I have no clue who that is,” Ives admitted. “But yeah, he had, like, folders with pictures of Batman, and he used to talk about him, like, _all_ the time. Robin, too. Pretty sure there were, like, weird psychological reasons, but honestly he was just kind of a weirdo.”

“Thanks, Ives,” Tim said, “for this wonderful look into my life as a ten year old.”

Ives shrugged. “I’m the only one left who knows you like that,” he said, eying Kon. Tim was pretty sure he felt threatened in ways of best friendship.

“That’s because pretty much everyone else is dead,” Tim muttered. Luckily Kon seemed to be the only who heard him.

The party continued with a lot of laughs and a lot of embarrassment. Most of their stories had to be altered to leave out certain superheroics, but Ives seemed to take most of them at face value and laughed at pretty much all of them.

Finally, almost an hour after Ives and Tim had arrived, the door opened again. In came Dick Grayson, the man, the myth, the…

“Dick,” Tim said, standing up suddenly. Once again, he became the – the starstruck, hero-worshipping thirteen year old he’d been almost five years ago.

Five years. He’d been doing this for five years. How many people had he lost? How many people had he met and failed to save? How had all of this happened in just five years?

Stop.

It was okay. It was his birthday party. His brother, the only brother who was really his _brother_ , was here, and he could spend time with him again. Things could stop being weird. Things could be okay again.

“Hey, little brother,” Dick said. He was right next to Tim now, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey,” Tim said. “I… haven't seen you in a while. Too long.”

“Definitely,” Dick agreed. “Sorry about that. I’ve been, well, dealing with my own stuff. But that’s not an excuse. I’m gonna be an involved brother and so on, such forth.”

“To me, too?” Cass spoke up.

“Uh, sure, Cass,” Dick said. “So the whole gang’s here.”

“I’m Ives,” Ives said, standing up and reaching out a hand. Dick took it. “I don’t think we’ve met, either.”

“Don’t think so, either,” Dick said. “So, what are we doing?”

Immediately, the conversations and party continued, everyone speaking up and over each other, with jokes and then laughter and all around chatter, and Tim loved it, he loved them, but he–

He left the room and hoped nobody would notice, even if he was the birthday boy.

He spent a few minutes just breathing, eyes closed, body curled into itself. One, two, three, and repeat. Tim had spent so long rebelling against any calming techniques his multiple therapists had tried to teach him that it felt unnatural to try and breathe evenly.

The door opened.

“Hey, lover,” Bart said, voice light but careful. “You good?”

“It was just too loud,” Tim said after taking a moment. “I’m alright. There’s so many people. And I was just thinking…”

Bart sat down next to him, legs spread out instead of pressed to himself. “Kon said he’d be a sec,” he said. “But if it’s too many people then it’s cool. I can shoo him off.”

“No, it’s…” Tim shook his head. “It’s alright. It’s not… it’s just _you._ ”

Bart didn’t respond. They just sat there for a while, then more when Kon walked in. They didn’t talk because there wasn’t really much to talk about.

Finally, Tim stood up. Bart and Kon followed him after a second, and when they got back to the main room, the party had seemed to die down. Everyone was watching some sort of reality TV series.

“Oh my god,” Tim said. “Is that Bridalplasty?”

Steph laughed in a squee-ing kind of way. Of course it had been her idea. What a weird and disturbing concept for a show. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

“I can’t believe this only went on for one season,” Dick said in a strained voice.

Tim joined them and, to Ives’ surprise and horror, kept a straight face throughout the plastic surgery scenes. Ives leaned over to him and muttered–

“How much Grey’s Anatomy have you been watching?”

“Don’t be a loser, Ives,” Tim whispered back.

“Right,” Ives said. “So I was wondering a thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Why are, like, all your friends superheroes?”

Tim didn’t respond for a while too long. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said eventually.

“Right.” Ives huffed out a quiet laugh and slid in his seat. “Really took the obsession to a whole new level.”

Tim shrugged both with his shoulders and his face. “Thanks, Ives,” he said. “But you probably should have seen it coming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what did you think? please comment if you have anything to say! or even if you don't. you can just say hi.
> 
> um... anyone need comic recs?


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